Fall of Giants

“Most people think the demonstrations will peter out as soon as the authorities manage to restore the supply of bread,” Kerensky said, and he went inside.

Grigori wondered what made the moderates think that was going to happen. If the authorities were able to restore the supply of bread, would they not have done so, instead of rationing it? But moderates always seemed to deal in hopes rather than facts.

Early in the afternoon Grigori was surprised to see the smiling faces of Katerina and Vladimir. He normally spent Sunday with them, but had assumed he would not see them today. Vladimir looked well and happy, much to Grigori’s relief. Evidently the boy had got over the infection. It was warm enough for Katerina to wear her coat open, showing her voluptuous figure. He wished he could caress her. She smiled at him, making him think of how she would kiss his face as they lay on the bed, and Grigori felt a stab of yearning that was almost unbearable. He hated to miss that Sunday afternoon embrace.

“How did you know I would be here?” he asked her.

“It was a lucky guess.”

“I’m glad to see you, but it’s dangerous for you to be in the city center.”

Katerina looked at the crowds strolling through the park. “It seems safe enough to me.”

Grigori could not dispute that. There was no sign of trouble.

Mother and child went off to walk around the frozen lake. Grigori’s breath caught in his throat as he watched Vladimir toddle away and almost immediately fall over. Katerina picked him up, soothed him, and walked on. They looked so vulnerable. What was going to happen to them?

When they returned, Katerina said she was taking Vladimir home for his nap.

“Go by the back streets,” Grigori said. “Keep away from crowds. I don’t know what might happen.”

“All right,” she said.

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

Grigori saw no bloodshed that day, but at the barracks in the evening he heard a different story from other groups. In Znamenskaya Square soldiers had been ordered to shoot demonstrators, and forty people had died. Grigori felt a cold hand on his heart. Katerina might have been killed just walking along the street!

Others were equally outraged, and in the mess hall feelings were running high. Sensing the mood of the men, Grigori stood on a table and took charge, calling for order and inviting soldiers to speak in turn. Supper turned rapidly into a mass meeting. He called first on Isaak, who was well known as the star of the regimental soccer team.

“I joined the army to kill Germans, not Russians,” Isaak said, and there was a roar of approval. “The marchers are our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers-and their only crime is to ask for bread!”

Grigori knew all the Bolsheviks in the regiment, and he called on several of them to speak, but he was careful to point to others too, not to seem overly biased. Normally the men were cautious about expressing their opinions, for fear their remarks would be reported and they would be punished; but today they did not seem to care.

The speaker who made the greatest impression was Yakov, a tall man with shoulders like a bear. He stood on the table beside Grigori with tears in his eyes. “When they told us to fire, I didn’t know what to do,” he said. He seemed unable to raise his voice, and the room went quiet as the other men strained to hear him. “I said: ‘God, please guide me now,’ and I listened in my heart, but God sent me no answer.” The men were silent. “I raised my rifle,” Yakov said. “The captain was screaming: ‘Shoot! Shoot!’ But who should I shoot at? In Galicia we knew who our enemies were because they were firing at us. But today in the square no one was attacking us. The people were mostly women, some with children. Even the men had no weapons.”

He fell silent. The men were as still as stones, as if they feared that any movement might break the spell. After a moment Isaak prompted him. “What happened next, Yakov Davidovich?”

“I pulled the trigger,” Yakov said, and the tears ran from his eyes into his bushy black beard. “I didn’t even aim the gun. The captain was screaming at me and I fired just to shut him up. But I hit a woman. A girl, really; about nineteen, I suppose. She had a green coat. I shot her in the chest, and the blood went all over the coat, red on green. Then she fell down.” He was weeping openly now, speaking in gasps. “I dropped my gun and tried to go to her, to help her, but the crowd went for me, punching and kicking, though I hardly felt it.” He wiped his face with his sleeve. “I’m in trouble, now, for losing my rifle.” There was another long pause. “Nineteen,” he said. “I think she must have been about nineteen.”