Fall of Giants

“It’s common. A woman cannot feed a baby unless she herself is fed. Nothing comes from nothing. That’s why the child is so thin.”

Grigori did not know Vladimir was thin.

Magda poked Vladimir’s belly and made him cry. “Inflammation of the bowels,” she said.

“Will he be all right?”

“Probably. Children get infections all the time. They usually survive.”

“What can we do?”

“Bathe his forehead with tepid water to bring down his temperature. Give him plenty to drink, all he wants. Don’t worry about whether he eats. Feed Katerina, so that she can nurse him. Mother’s milk is what he needs.”

Grigori took Vladimir home. He bought more milk on the way, and warmed it up on the fire. He gave it to Vladimir on a teaspoon, and the boy drank it all. Then he warmed a pan of water and bathed Vladimir’s face with a rag. It seemed to work: the child lost the flushed, staring look and began to breathe normally.

Grigori was feeling less anxious when Katerina came home at half past seven. She looked tired and cold. She had bought a cabbage and a few grams of pork fat, and Grigori put them in a saucepan to make stew while she rested. He told her about Vladimir’s fever, the negligent landlady, and Magda’s prescription. “What can I do?” Katerina said with weary despair. “I have to go to the factory. There is no one else to watch Volodya.”

Grigori fed the child with the broth from the stew, then put him down to sleep. When Grigori and Katerina had eaten they lay on the bed together. “Don’t let me sleep too long,” Katerina said. “I have to join the bread queue.”

“I’ll go for you,” Grigori said. “You rest.” He would be late back to the barracks, but he could probably get away with that: the officers were too fearful of mutiny, these days, to make a fuss about minor transgressions.

Katerina took him at his word, and fell into a deep sleep.

When he heard the church clock strike two, he put on his boots and greatcoat. Vladimir seemed to be sleeping normally. Grigori left the house and walked to the bakery. To his surprise there was already a long queue, and he realized he had left it a bit late. There were about a hundred people in line, muffled up, stamping their feet in the snow. Some had brought chairs or stools. An enterprising young man with a brazier was selling porridge, washing the bowls in the snow when they were done with. A dozen more people joined the queue behind Grigori.

They gossiped and grumbled while they waited. Two women ahead of Grigori argued about who was to blame for the bread shortage: one said Germans at court, the other Jews hoarding flour. “Who rules?” Grigori said to them. “If a streetcar overturns, you blame the driver, because he was in charge. The Jews don’t rule us. The Germans don’t rule us. It’s the tsar and the nobility.” This was the Bolshevik message.

“Who would rule, if there was no tsar?” said the younger woman skeptically. She was wearing a yellow felt hat.

“I think we should rule ourselves,” said Grigori. “As they do in France and America.”

“I don’t know,” said the older woman. “It can’t go on like this.”

The shop opened at five. A minute later the news came down the line that customers were rationed to one loaf per person. “All night, just for one loaf!” said the woman in the yellow hat.

It took another hour to shuffle to the head of the queue. The baker’s wife was admitting customers one at a time. The older of the two women ahead of Grigori went in, then the baker’s wife said: “That’s all. No more bread.”

The woman in the yellow hat said: “No, please! Just one more!”

The baker’s wife wore a stony expression. Perhaps this had happened before. “If he had more flour, he’d bake more bread,” she said. “It’s all gone, do you hear me? I can’t sell you bread if I haven’t got any.”

The last customer came out of the shop with her loaf under her coat and hurried away.

The woman in the yellow hat began to cry.

The baker’s wife slammed the door.

Grigori turned and walked away.

{II}

Spring came to Petrograd on Thursday, March 8, but the Russian empire clung obstinately to the calendar of Julius Caesar, so they called it February 23. The rest of Europe had been using the modern calendar for three hundred years.

The rise in temperature coincided with International Women’s Day, and the female workers from the textile mills came out on strike and marched from the industrial suburbs into the city center to protest against the bread queues, the war, and the tsar. Bread rationing had been announced, but it seemed to have made the shortage worse.

The First Machine Gun Regiment, like all army units in the city, was detailed to help the police and the mounted Cossacks keep order. What would happen, Grigori wondered, if the soldiers were ordered to fire on the marchers? Would they obey? Or would they turn their rifles on their officers? In 1905 they had obeyed orders and shot workers. But since then the Russian people had suffered a decade of tyranny, repression, war, and hunger.