Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [528]
Ivan moved forward, cautiously. All around, the empty steppe of south Russia extended to the horizon.
The war was almost over. The Whites and their foreign allies had nearly been successful once or twice. For a brief period it had seemed Petrograd itself would fall. Denikin, Wrangel and others had fought well. But they had always lacked the coordination that the Reds enjoyed. And, perhaps, the determination. Now the final White front was being rolled back, and the capitalist allies – Britain, America, Japan, Italy – had all given up.
And now here was a Cossack officer still alive. A handsome devil certainly, but doomed.
Karpenko watched Ivan draw close. It was a pity, certainly, to be dying. Two years ago he could never have imagined himself fighting like this. But, to his great surprise, it had brought him a kind of satisfaction. The pain in his stomach was like a fire.
It seemed to him that the young Red looked vaguely familiar; but it scarcely mattered.
‘Well, comrade, you’d better put me out of my misery,’ he said cheerfully.
Which Ivan did, as kindly as he could. As it happened, it was the last shot he had to fire.
The revolution had been won.
Coda
1937
Softly, softly, the music began, and although it was late at night, the eleventh hour, he felt fresh and confident.
If there were still just time.
Dimitri Suvorin’s pen moved quickly over the paper.
It was a short piece, the Suite. A little programmatic piece inspired by Russian folklore. Children and adults, he thought, could enjoy it. Everything was written now, except the coda.
In the room next door, his wife and children were sleeping. There was one boy, named after his grandfather, Peter, and a girl, Maryushka. The little boy, people said, was very like him. As he wrote, Dimitri smiled to himself. The Suite was for all his family, but especially for little Peter. He had dedicated it to him that very evening and he knew that it was important he should do so. For then, when the boy heard it, perhaps he would understand.
It was the answer to the terrible secret they shared.
The Suite was a charming idea. It was the story of some hunters who go into the forest and meet a bear. Naturally, they are afraid of the bear, but they capture it and bring the huge beast back with them in chains. On their way back through the forest, they catch a glimpse of the magical firebird. One of the hunters, knowing its wonderful properties, races after the bird, trying to get one of its feathers. But he fails. The gleaming bird, as it always does, flies away, taunting, elusive.
Dimitri was pleased with the musical characterizations: the bear had a slow, heavily accented tune, representing his simple nature and his heavy footfall; the firebird a haunting little melody which would suddenly break out into brilliant, staccato bursts of sound as its feathers glittered and burst into flame.
When the men get the bear back to the town, they train it for the circus, and the music represented the coaxing and the blows, the bear’s misery and his clumsy steps as he begins to rumble round the circus, obedient to their will. It was full of pathos and humour. The children would clap and laugh.
But would it be approved?
Dimitri paused in his work for a moment. Outside, he could see over the roofs of the nearby buildings. A moon, nearly full, rode high in the autumn sky. And three miles away, he knew, in his study deep in the Kremlin, another figure would certainly be working at this hour.
It was remarkable what Stalin had achieved: there was no question. In the early twenties, after the ruin of the Civil War, how uncertain the course of the revolution had seemed. The leadership had even had to tolerate, with the New Economic Policy, a measure of capitalism for a time. But then Stalin had imposed his will: what Lenin had begun, he would complete. And the transformation had been astounding: the entire countryside turned into state farms and collectives; the independent peasants of the Ukraine deported en masse. The first, stupendous Five Year Plan for industry completed in just