Fall of Giants

He walked south along Samsonievsky Prospekt and over the Liteiny Bridge into the city center. Some of the swanky shops were still open, their windows bright with electric light, but many were closed. In the more mundane stores there was little for sale. A baker’s window contained a single cake and a handwritten sign reading: “No bread until tomorrow.”

The broad boulevard of Nevsky Prospekt reminded him of walking along here with his mother, on that fateful day in 1905 when he had seen her shot down by the tsar’s soldiers. Now he was one of the tsar’s soldiers. But he would not be shooting at women and children. If the tsar tried that now there would be trouble of a different kind.

He saw ten or twelve thuggish young men in black coats and black caps carrying a portrait of Tsar Nicholas as a young man, his dark hair not yet receding, his gingery beard luxuriant. One of them shouted: “Long live the tsar!” and they all stopped, raised their caps, and cheered. Several passersby raised their hats.

Grigori had encountered such bands before. They were called the Black Hundreds, part of the Union of the Russian People, a right-wing group that wanted to return to the golden age when the tsar was the unchallenged father of his people and Russia had no liberals, no socialists, and no Jews. Their newspapers were financed by the government and their pamphlets were printed in the basement of police headquarters, according to information the Bolsheviks got from their contacts in the police.

Grigori walked past with a glance of contempt, but one of them accosted him. “Hey, you! Why is your hat on?”

Grigori walked on without replying, but another member of the gang grabbed his arm. “What are you, a Jew?” the second man said. “Doff your cap!”

Grigori said quietly: “Touch me again and I’ll tear your fucking head off, you loudmouthed schoolboy.”

The man backed off, then offered Grigori a pamphlet. “Read this, friend,” he said. “It explains how the Jews are betraying you soldiers.”

“Get out of my way, or I’ll shove that stupid pamphlet all the way up your arse,” said Grigori.

The man looked to his comrades for support, but they had started beating up a middle-aged man in a fur hat. Grigori walked away.

As he passed the doorway of a boarded-up shop, a woman spoke to him. “Hey, big boy,” she said. “You can fuck me for a ruble.” Her words were standard prostitute’s talk, but her voice surprised him: she sounded educated. He glanced her way. She was wearing a long coat, and when he looked at her she opened it to show that she had nothing on underneath, despite the cold. She was in her thirties, with big breasts and a round belly.

Grigori felt a surge of desire. He had not been with a woman for years. The trench prostitutes were vile, dirty, and diseased. But this woman looked like someone he could embrace.

She closed her coat. “Yes or no?”

“I haven’t got any money,” Grigori said.

“What’s in that bag?” She nodded at the sack he was carrying.

“A few scraps of food.”

“I’ll do you for a loaf of bread,” the woman said. “My children are starving.”

Grigori thought of those plump breasts. “Where?”

“In the back room of the shop.”

At least, Grigori thought, I won’t be mad with sexual frustration when I meet Katerina. “All right.”

She opened the door, led him in, and closed and bolted it. They walked through the empty shop and into another room. Grigori saw, in the dim illumination from the streetlight, that there was a mattress on the floor covered with a blanket.

The woman turned to face him, letting her coat fall open again. He stared at the thatch of dark hair at her groin. She put out her hand. “The bread first, please, Sergeant.”

He took a big loaf of black bread from his sack and gave it to her.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” she said.

She ran up a flight of stairs and opened a door. Grigori heard a child’s voice. Then a man coughed, a hacking rasp from deep in his chest. There were muffled sounds of movement and low voices for a few moments. Then he heard the door again, and she came down the stairs.

She took off her coat, lay back on the mattress, and parted her legs. Grigori lay beside her and put his arms around her. She had an attractive, intelligent face lined with strain. She said: “Mm, you’re so strong!”

He stroked her soft skin, but all desire had left him. The entire scene was too pathetic: the empty shop, the sick husband, the hungry children, and the woman’s false coquetry.

She unbuttoned his trousers and grasped his limp penis. “Do you want me to suck it?”

“No.” He sat upright and handed her the coat. “Put this back on.”

In a frightened voice she said: “You can’t have the bread back-it’s already half-eaten.”

He shook his head. “What happened to you?”

She put her coat on and fastened the buttons. “Have you got any cigarettes?”

He gave her a cigarette and took one himself.