Lenin's Roller Coaster, page 34
Caitlin relived that conversation for several days, the same thoughts and feelings drawing circles around her brain until she felt like screaming. There was nothing else for it, she decided one evening. She had to really end it, cut him out of her head.
The letter was written that night, stamped and sent off early next morning.
She went back to work.
Sauchiehall Street was packed with people as far as the eye could see. Most of the soldiers were still overseas, and those present were vastly outnumbered by women, children, and the elderly. Most of the bairns were happily waving their Union flags, and many of the women seemed almost hysterical with relief, but the eyes that tugged at McColl were the ones that mirrored the cost. So many men had fallen, and still the band played on.
He hadn’t wanted to come, but his mother had insisted. “We have to celebrate the peace,” she’d told him. “Think how happy Jed would have been.”
Jed was dead. After four years in the trenches with hardly a break, he’d finally picked up a wound that was serious enough to merit a fortnight back home. And there, like so many others that fateful September, he’d caught the Spanish flu and died.
His mother had borne the shock better than McColl had expected. For five days she’d hardly stopped weeping, but once the funeral was over, she had consciously pulled herself together. “I know a lot of women who’ve lost all their sons,” she’d told him, “and one of mine’s still here. So I’ll count my blessings and get on with my life. That’s what Jed would have wanted.”
McColl had stayed on in Glasgow meaning to look after her, but it soon became clear to both of them that they were looking after each other. Now it sometimes felt as if she were all that stopped him from floating away.
In October he’d finally heard from Cumming—a summons to the Whitehall Court aerie that at first he’d thought to ignore but then decided to honor. For one thing he was curious, and for another he knew he owed the old man something, if only an explanation. So he’d taken the train south on a bright autumn day, assuming he wasn’t en route to prison, but not completely certain.
Cumming had been brusque as ever. He had listened to McColl’s version of what had happened in Moscow, interspersing a few nods and grunts, then asked for a detailed account of his escape. Getting in and out of Lenin’s Russia was “becoming a trifle tricky,” and the Service was keen to learn from McColl’s experience.
And that had almost been that. There was no way that McColl could ever be reinstated—initiative was all very well, but Cumming couldn’t have his agents deciding who they were and weren’t prepared to work with, especially in the middle of an operation. And of course a pension was out of the question.
But there would be a medal. For his work in India, Cumming had added superfluously—McColl had not been expecting one for his service in Russia. It would be in the post in a couple of weeks, which was probably for the best. His mother would not appreciate his dropping it into the Thames.
As a parting shot, Cumming couldn’t resist asking after Caitlin. “That Irish-American girl. Is she still in Moscow?”
“I believe so,” McColl had answered shortly.
“You’re not in contact?”
“No.”
Cumming had shaken his head, perhaps in admiration. “She does get around.”
She did, and McColl had lied about the lack of contact. A letter had arrived in late September, but his joy had been short-lived—she’d sent it from Japan almost six months before. After bathing in its love and affection, McColl had admonished himself for being so foolish. The letter was like one of those stars in the sky that appeared to be shining so brightly but had actually burned out aeons before.
Several weeks later a second missive had proved his point. She had given up journalism completely and taken a full-time job with the government women’s organization. And since there was no prospect of her leaving Russia in the foreseeable future, she didn’t think it fair to keep him dangling. So she was setting him free—not, of course, that he wasn’t free already. He would know what she meant. She did love him, but love and life sometimes led in different directions. She hoped he’d understand.
He did. It was over, at least as far as she was concerned. All he could do was accept it. And maybe, given time, he would.
But not yet. As he stood there in Sauchiehall Street, surrounded by revelers, acceptance was not on the cards. Of her defection or of anything else. Others might see cause for celebration, but the dead were no less dead for being invisible. If all the corpses were stacked in rows, they would fill this street to the rooftops, this street and thousands of others, more valleys of death than Tennyson ever dreamed of. The noble six hundred? How about the noble six million?
Ours not to reason why?
Like fuck.
At least the dead were dead. How could the survivors ever recover?
Not that McColl felt guiltless. Far from it. Not a day went by he didn’t see Fedya’s head exploding, or Kerzhentsev wheezing his last, or Cheselden smiling that stupidly innocent smile. The flu had taken Soph as well, and the letters to her were still in McColl’s suitcase.
He had left his own trail of dead, and for what? A better world? The one he’d imagined only five years before seemed more like a joke than a prospect.
The conference was a triumph. Three hundred women had been expected, and four times as many turned up. They came from all over Russia, the young and not-so-young, the poor and the formerly rich, wearing everything from overalls to veils. The sessions were sometimes stirring, frequently enraging, and almost always inspiring. There was even an unscheduled visit from Lenin, who gave a short speech pledging his support for full women’s rights, something no other leader on earth had done. When the conference broke up, few of the delegates traveled home with any intention of letting things stay as they were.
It didn’t make up for the terror—of course it didn’t—but as far as Caitlin was concerned, the conference offered the proof she needed that her revolution was still alive.
Two days later she boarded a train for Petrograd, where she had the task of persuading Lenin’s disciple Zinoviev that the women of the world deserved their own section in the new International. The journey passed by faster than expected, partly because the train showed a marked reluctance to submit to the Russian stereotype, but mostly on account of the company. She hadn’t seen Sergei Piatakov since he and Brady had come to see her in July. He was joining a newly formed Red Army regiment in Petrograd and had recently returned from the fighting on the Volga. He had some news of Brady. The American had suffered a serious knee wound back in the summer but was more or less fit again now and running a Cheka unit in the recently recaptured Samara.
Their train reached Petrograd soon after midday, and with her first meeting fixed for the following morning Caitlin went out for a nostalgic stroll. It was almost a year to the day since her arrival from England, and as on that occasion the city was wearing its first cloak of snow. After visiting a favorite café—the variety of fare available was much reduced, the welcoming smiles the same—she hailed a droshky and asked its surly-looking driver to take her out to Luna Park.
“It’s shut,” he told her, but she insisted on going regardless.
Once there he waited while she walked around the roller coaster, its structure coated in ice, the cars frozen hard to the rails.
It was ten months since the wedding, ten months in which the happy couple had hardly seen each other and mostly argued when they did.
It was four years and more since she and Jack had ridden the one on Coney Island.
She slowly walked back to the waiting droshky, thinking about the letter she’d received from her aunt a few days before. It had made her so happy; it had made her cry.
Sometimes she was sure she was doing what was right, and sometimes she feared that she hadn’t a clue.
Historical Note
With historical fiction the question often arises as to where the history ends and the fiction begins, and I feel it is incumbent on authors to at least take a stab at explaining their own approach. The most important thing, to my mind, is that the historical context—by which I mean everything from political events to food and clothing—should be as accurate as possible. Some will disagree with my judgments—history, after all, is often a matter of opinion. Others will gleefully point out the odd mistake, and as someone prone to schadenfreude myself, I can hardly complain when they do.
My account of the year that followed Lenin’s revolution is, of course, partial—it reflects my fictional characters’ interests and beliefs as much as it does the totality of actual events. I have included real people in the story, some in passing, others in more important ways. Alexandra Kollontai, Pavel Dybenko, Yakov Peters, Maria Spiridonova, and V. Volodarsky were all prominent figures in the revolution and its aftermath, and Mansfield Cumming was the head of the British Secret Service at this time. I hope I have portrayed them accurately and not had them do anything too uncharacteristic. The journalists who appear—Jack Reed, Louise Bryant, Bessie Beatty, Albert Rhys Williams, Arthur Ransome, and Morgan Philips Price—were all real people, and I have made frequent use of the vivid accounts they left of their time in Russia. Louise Bryant’s Six Red Months in Russia best captures the hopes that the revolution inspired in its first year.
The main characters—Jack McColl, Caitlin Hanley, and their families; Audley Cheselden, Semyon Kerzhentsev, Fedya, and Aidan Brady—are all fictional, as are Yuri Komarov and Sergei Piatakov, who have only minor roles here but who will figure more prominently in the fourth and final book of the series.
The activities of the British and French intelligence services in Russia, Ukraine, and Turkestan at this time were many and varied, and they were carried through by a bewildering variety of organizations and groups. I have simplified this somewhat and fictionalized those working on the ground, but all the schemes alluded to—including those intended to cause mass starvation—are part of the historical record. Michael Occleshaw’s Dances in Deep Shadows is the best and most thorough account.
The events chronicled in the United States—the state persecution of those who opposed the war, the hobbling of the press, and the political crucifixion of the IWW union—are not inventions.
With the end of the grisly Soviet experiment now more than a quarter of a century in the past, the inspiration provided by the original revolution—one that captivated millions of men and women in the interwar years and beyond—is not easy to understand. Those wishing to do so should read Victor Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary, a beautifully written account of the political and emotional roller coaster that Lenin set in motion in 1917.
David Downing, Lenin's Roller Coaster
