Fall of Giants

The First Machine Guns were not the only regiment to have mutinied this morning. When he reached the far side of the bridge he was even more elated to see that the streets were full of soldiers wearing their caps backward or their coats unbuttoned in merry defiance of regulations. Most sported red armbands or red lapel ribbons to show they were revolutionaries. Commandeered cars roared around, erratically driven, rifle barrels and bayonets sticking out of the windows, laughing girls sitting on the soldiers’ knees inside. The pickets and checkpoints of yesterday had vanished. The streets had been taken over by the people.

Grigori saw a wine shop with its windows broken and its door battered down. A soldier and a girl came out, bottles in both hands, trampling over broken glass. Next door a café proprietor had put plates of smoked fish and sliced sausage on a table outside, and stood beside it with a red ribbon in his lapel, smiling nervously and inviting soldiers to help themselves. Grigori guessed he was trying to make sure his place was not broken into and looted like the wine shop.

The carnival atmosphere grew as they neared the center. Some people were already quite drunk, although it was only midday. Girls seemed happy to kiss anyone with a red armband, and Grigori saw a soldier openly fondling the large breasts of a smiling middle-aged woman. Some girls had dressed in soldiers’ uniforms, and swaggered along the streets in caps and oversize boots, evidently feeling liberated.

A shiny Rolls-Royce car came along the street and the crowd tried to stop it. The chauffeur put his foot on the gas but someone opened the door and pulled him out. People shoved one another trying to get into the car. Grigori saw Count Maklakov, one of the directors of the Putilov works, scramble out of the backseat. Grigori recalled how Maklakov had been so entranced with Princess Bea the day she visited the factory. The crowd jeered but did not molest the count as he hurried away, pulling his fur collar up around his ears. Nine or ten people crammed into his car and someone drove it off, honking blithely.

At the next corner a handful of people were tormenting a tall man in the trilby hat and well-worn greatcoat of a middle-class professional. A soldier poked him with his rifle barrel, an old woman spat at him, and a young man in worker’s overalls threw a handful of rubbish. “Let me pass!” the man said, trying to sound commanding, but they just laughed. Grigori recognized the thin figure of Kanin, supervisor of the casting section at the Putilov works. His hat fell off, and Grigori saw that he had gone bald.

Grigori pushed through the little crowd. “There’s nothing wrong with this man!” he shouted. “He’s an engineer, I used to work with him.”

Kanin recognized him. “Thank you, Grigori Sergeivich,” he said. “I’m just trying to make my way to my mother’s house, to see if she’s all right.”

Grigori turned to the crowd. “Let him pass,” he said. “I vouch for him.” He saw a woman carrying a reel of red ribbon-looted, presumably, from a haberdashery-and asked her for a length. She cut some off with a pair of scissors, and Grigori tied it around Kanin’s left sleeve. The crowd cheered.

“Now you’ll be safe,” Grigori said.

Kanin shook his hand and walked away, and they let him pass.

Grigori’s group came out onto Nevsky Prospekt, the broad shopping street that ran from the Winter Palace to Nikolaevsky Station. It was full of people drinking from bottles, eating, kissing, and firing guns into the air. Those restaurants that were open had signs reading “Free food for revolutionaries!” and “Eat what you like, pay what you can!” Many shops had been broken into, and there was smashed glass all over the cobblestones. One of the hated streetcars-priced too high for workers to use-had been overturned in the middle of the road, and a Renault automobile had crashed into it.

Grigori heard a rifle shot, but it was one of many, and he thought nothing of it for a second; but then Varya, by his side, staggered and fell down. Grigori and Yakov knelt either side of her. She seemed unconscious. They turned the heavy body over, not without difficulty, and saw immediately that she was beyond help: a bullet had entered her forehead, and her eyes stared up sightlessly.

Grigori did not allow himself to feel sorrow, either on his own account or for Varya’s son, his best friend, Konstantin. He had learned on the battlefield to fight back first and grieve later. But was this a battlefield? Who could possibly want to kill Varya? Yet the wound was so exactly placed that he could hardly believe she was the victim of a stray bullet fired at random.

His question was answered a moment later. Yakov keeled over, bleeding from his chest. His heavy body hit the cobbles with a thump.

Grigori stepped away from the two bodies, saying: “What the hell?” He dropped into a crouch, making himself a smaller target, and rapidly looked around for somewhere he could take cover.