Fall of Giants

Grigori had not noticed the door opening, but suddenly Lieutenant Kirillov was there. “Get off that damn table, Yakov,” he shouted. He looked at Grigori. “You, too, Peshkov, you troublemaker.” He turned and spoke to the men, sitting on benches at their trestle tables. “Return to your barracks, all of you,” he said. “Anyone still in this room one minute from now gets a flogging.”

No one moved. The men stared surlily at the lieutenant. Grigori wondered if this was how a mutiny started.

But Yakov was too lost in his misery to realize what a moment of drama he had created; he got down clumsily from the table, and the tension was released. Some of the men close to Kirillov stood up, looking sullen but scared. Grigori remained defiantly standing on the table a few moments longer, but he sensed that the men were not quite angry enough to turn on an officer, so in the end he got down. The men started to leave the room. Kirillov remained where he was, glaring at everyone.

Grigori returned to barracks and soon the bell rang for lights-out. As a sergeant, he had the privilege of a curtained niche at the end of his platoon’s dormitory. He could hear the men speaking in low voices.

“I won’t shoot women,” said one.

“Me neither.”

A third voice said: “If you don’t, some of these bastard officers will shoot you for disobedience!”

“I’m going to aim to miss,” said another voice.

“They might see.”

“You only have to aim a bit above the heads of the crowd. No one can be sure what you’re doing.”

“That’s what I’m going to do,” said another voice.

“Me, too.”

“Me, too.”

We’ll see, Grigori thought as he drifted off to sleep. Brave words came easily in the dark. Daylight might tell a different story.

{III}

On Monday Grigori’s platoon was marched the short distance along Samsonievsky Prospekt to the Liteiny Bridge and ordered to prevent demonstrators crossing the river to the city center. The bridge was four hundred yards long, and rested on massive stone piers set into the frozen river like stranded icebreakers.

This was the same job they had had on Friday, but the orders were different. Lieutenant Kirillov briefed Grigori. He spoke these days as if he was in a constant bad temper, and perhaps he was: officers probably disliked being lined up against their own countrymen just as much as the men did. “No marchers are to cross the river, either by the bridge or on the ice, do you understand? You will shoot people who flout your instructions.”

Grigori hid his contempt. “Yes, Excellency!” he said smartly.

Kirillov repeated the orders, then disappeared. Grigori thought the lieutenant was scared. Doubtless he feared being held responsible for what happened, whether his orders were obeyed or defied.

Grigori had no intention of obeying. He would allow the leaders of the march to engage him in discussion while their followers crossed the ice, exactly as it had played out on Friday.

However, early in the morning his platoon was joined by a detachment of police. To his horror, he saw that they were led by his old enemy Mikhail Pinsky. The man did not appear to be suffering from the shortage of bread: his round face was fatter than ever, and his police uniform was tight around the middle. He was carrying a loud-hailer. His weasel-faced sidekick, Kozlov, was nowhere in sight.

“I know you,” Pinsky said to Grigori. “You used to work at the Putilov factory.”

“Until you had me conscripted,” Grigori said.

“Your brother is a murderer, but he escaped to America.”

“So you say.”

“No one is going to cross the river here today.”

“We shall see.”

“I expect full cooperation from your men, is that understood?”

Grigori said: “Aren’t you afraid?”

“Of the rabble? Don’t be stupid.”

“No, I mean of the future. Suppose the revolutionaries get their way. What do you think they will do to you? You’ve spent your life bullying the weak, beating people up, harassing women, and taking bribes. Don’t you fear a day of retribution?”

Pinsky pointed a gloved finger at Grigori. “I’m reporting you as a damned subversive,” he said, and he walked away.

Grigori shrugged. It was not as easy as it used to be for the police to arrest anyone they liked. Isaak and others might mutiny if Grigori was jailed, and the officers knew it.

The day started quietly, but Grigori noted that few workers were on the streets. Many factories were closed because they could not get fuel for their steam engines and furnaces. Other places were on strike, the employees demanding more money to pay inflated prices, or heating for ice-cold workshops, or safety rails around dangerous machinery. It looked as if almost no one was actually going to work today. But the sun rose cheerfully, and people were not going to stay indoors. Sure enough, at midmorning Grigori saw, coming along Samsonievsky Prospekt, a large crowd of men and women in the ragged clothes of industrial workers.