Maid of Baikal: A Novel of the Russian Civil War

“And your family opposed the Bolsheviks, I presume?”

“Everyone in our village opposed them,” Ivashov answered, bluish sparks flaming up in his eyes before dying just as quickly. “Only in the cities and larger towns did the Reds have any following.”

“Then what happened when the Red Army captured Samara, and the People’s Army was forced to flee? Was your family able to escape?”

The Russian stopped chewing and put down his bread. A long moment followed before he swallowed. When he looked up, his face was ashen.

“They escaped, after a fashion,” he replied with a twisted smile and a voice devoid of emotion. “You see, my mother and my sister were killed when our house was hit by Red artillery. Mercifully, my mother died instantly, but my sister died alone nearly a week later, in a field hospital, suffering greatly from her wounds. I was on the front lines and could not go to her.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ned replied. “That must have been…”

“No, it’s not as you think,” Ivashov interrupted with a pained expression. “I believe their deaths were merciful, in a way. They were spared far worse.”

“So, when Samara fell, you traveled east and joined up with the Siberians?” Ned continued, unsure what to say next.

Ivashov stared out the window for a long moment before answering.

“It was not so easy to break free from the Reds. And when at last I did, I felt I had nothing left to live for. Oddly enough, the thought of revenge did not even enter my mind. But I am a Russian officer, and I swore an oath to defend my country. So my choice was a simple one: I resolved to fight on until Russia is free or I am dead.”

Before Ned could conjure up a response, Ivashov brushed the breadcrumbs from his trousers and rose to leave.

“I will be back after a while. I suggest you lock the door and let no one in but me.”

Ned gave the Russian a solemn nod and watched him go. After locking the door, he re-wrapped the remaining food and settled back for the ride. Suffering from a lack of sleep owing to his late arrival in Irkutsk the night before, he let the train wheels’ rhythmic clacking lull him to sleep.

When he awoke, he looked outside his window to find the train running alongside the Angara River, Lake Baikal’s only outlet, which flowed swift, clear and cold toward the mighty Yenisei River and from there to the Arctic Ocean. Before long, snow-clad mountains loomed high in the distance and were reflected back in the clear depths of the lake. From Slyudyanka to Kabansk, the railway traced the curving shoreline, its roadbed hugging Lake Baikal’s southern edge, sometimes within a niche carved into a series of rocky outcrops that plunged down to the lake’s limpid waters. Ned watched as a pillar of smoke and steam rose into the sky and trailed behind like an endless staircase.

The further east the train traveled, and the longer Ned remained alone, the more he brooded over his decision to come to this vast and unknown land, halfway around the globe from home, and now gripped by a debilitating civil war that most Americans considered irrelevant to their interests. For reasons that Ned was unable to fathom, the U.S. Government had sent some eight thousand of its soldiers off to Siberia, not to fight, but to maintain the railways, keep an eye on the Japanese, and facilitate safe passage home for some forty thousand Czech prisoners of war. And the one activity expressly forbidden the AEF was to join the Siberians in combat against the Red Army.

Now, having traveled thousands of miles from Washington to Vladivostok and Irkutsk, Ned found himself traveling not toward the Siberian capital, but away from it, through a silent wilderness of taiga forest. Hour after hour, the train clacked on toward a destination with no military significance whatsoever. With a start, Ned seized his haversack and rummaged through its neatly folded contents for the sinister blue vodka bottle, only to find it drained. He shook the last astringent drops onto his tongue and flung the empty bottle under his seat.

Unable to sleep now and without the means to get drunk, Ned settled back in the cushioned seat to watch Siberia roll by. Over the next seventy or eighty versts,[6] the train traveled through more than thirty tunnels. All along Lake Baikal’s southeastern shore, jagged mountains edged ever closer to the water. Before the train finally left the shoreline, the lake’s surface became a great shimmering mirror as the sun sank lower and lower and then dipped below the purple mountains, revealing a half-moon sailing serenely across the darkening sky.

The final stretch of rail from Kabansk to Verkhne-Udinsk followed the Selenga River through some fertile-looking but uninhabited valleys, rimmed with stands of pine just large enough to cut for timber. But the primary impression this left on him was of Russia’s infinite vastness, its disturbing strangeness, as if alive with primitive spirits, and the utter absurdity of anyone presuming to conquer such a land in any meaningful sense.