Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

The Maid left him without another word. Later that day, the man died of a broken neck suffered when falling off his horse. After that, shows of disrespect toward the Maid dropped off sharply. More remarkably, with the exception of the unfortunate veteran, few other officers or soldiers seemed to harbor a carnal desire for Zhanna, despite her beauty and the fact that she dressed and undressed daily in the same camp as they. To the contrary, she seemed to have the uncanny knack of banishing erotic thoughts from any who might covet her body. As Ivashov once told Ned, “I should as soon think of Zhanna in that way as of the Blessed Virgin herself.”

One evening around the campfire, when tales were told about Zhanna’s outstanding military aptitude, Paladin told a story that Ned found especially significant. According to the girl’s father, when Zhanna was a toddler and one of her male cousins was still an infant, a silver tray was placed before the boy with common objects that symbolized various career paths: a gold coin for a merchant, a pen for an intellectual, a fragment of sable pelt for a cavalryman, and so on. By tradition, whichever object the infant grasped first would foreshadow his future vocation. To everyone’s surprise, the toddler Zhanna approached the tray before it reached her cousin, grasped the sable, and refused to release it. The incident was noted as strange at the time but remained largely forgotten until she announced her intention to fight the Bolsheviks.

After the second week in camp, Zhanna took to addressing small groups of soldiers from time to time about the difficult road that lay before them. By now her new style of leadership had taken root among the men and she used her short speeches to evoke common bonds of culture, religion and patriotism, and to lay out the principles she aimed to establish in a post-Bolshevik Russia.

“Like the Bolsheviks,” she explained, “we aim to create a new government for the benefit of all, not just the wealthy and high-born. But we differ from the Bolsheviks in that we aim to preserve our freedom and everything that is good about Russia. We seek to uphold our Russian culture and traditions, not tear them down to suit a vision of society shared only by the Bolshevik elite. We aim to strengthen our communities, where we share with and help one other, not at the point of a gun, but with love in our hearts.”

The men listened with rapt attention, for they were completely unaccustomed to having their officers instruct them not only in how to fight, but why.

“Like the Bolsheviks,” she continued, “we call for land reform, but to us, this means the right of every peasant to purchase his own piece of land, if he works to achieve it. We refuse to be herded like slaves onto collective farms where a man has no right to enjoy the full fruits of his labors. We seek the freedom to begin a new life anywhere in the vastness of Russia, not only for ourselves, but for our children and our neighbors and our neighbors’ children. And when at last we defeat Bolshevism and secure our cherished rights and freedoms, we Russians will not only form the largest nation on God’s earth, but perhaps in time, the greatest.”

* * *

One warm night before bedtime, Ned and Ivashov lay under an overcast sky, smoking corncob pipes, watching for blue flashes of summer lightning to flicker against the clouds, and listening for the thunder to roll past moments later. From the steppe, a warm wind brought the honeyed perfume of flowering thyme. Suddenly the rhythmic swish of footsteps could be heard in the tall grass and Ned rose on one elbow to discover Zhanna approaching them dressed in riding breeches, high leather boots and a loose Cossack blouse.

She sat down between the two men and idly plucked a green stem from the wall of grass to stick between her teeth.

“I have a spare pipe and tobacco if you’d like to share a smoke,” Ivashov offered in a lazy voice, without stirring.

“Yuck!” she answered with a girlish chuckle. “No thanks. I’ll stick with my sweet Timothy Grass stems.”

“It’s been a long day,” Ned ventured after a few moments of quiet. “But I see progress. We have some fine lads in the unit.”

He rolled his head toward Ivashov to see if the staff captain were listening.

“True enough,” the Russian answered. “Most have experience and seem well trained. But the question is: will they fight?”

“I expect some won’t,” Zhanna interrupted in a matter-of-fact voice. “But we know who they are and will dismiss those men even before we break camp for Uralsk.”

“And the rest?” Ivashov pressed, taking a puff of strong makhorka[32] tobacco from his pipe. “What will impel them to follow when their lives lie in the balance?”