The Accidental Anarchist (4 page)

The prosecutor painted our little brawl as an outrage committed by me, alone, an act of unprovoked savagery and insubordination that, unless punished so severely as to set an example for future generations, surely would lead to a speedy and total breakdown of all military discipline and inevitably to the dreaded revolution – a word that, in those days, tended to be followed directly by a death sentence.

I saw immediately that the judge was not in my corner. Any minute now I would be called upon to speak in my own defense. And what could I talk about? “Jewish honor?” I could already see myself blindfolded and tied to a stake.

Especially since my aristocratic defender, who had finally strolled in and taken his seat, one hand vainly attempting to comfort a throbbing brow, listened to the prosecutor like a man who couldn’t wait to put this tedious performance behind him and get back to bed.

The aggrieved sergeant, bearing his scars as officiously as battle wounds, took the stand first. He delivered a good, strong recitation on how I had attacked him, totally without provocation, in what he could only assume to be a Polack Jew’s typical frenzy of rebellion against good, Russian discipline. With each minute he spoke, I could almost see the judge adding another soldier to the firing squad.

At this point, Mikhailoff, who until now had maintained a morose, hung-over, rather self-pitying silence, rose to my defense. Once he had found his feet, he straightened his body with remarkable steadiness. To my horror, though, he did not seem quite certain who in the room was the defendant. Nor, once he found me in response to Mordechai’s frantic chin-wagging, did he pay the slightest attention to any of the charges against me. Instead, he launched into an impassioned attack on those non-coms who, by their unrestrained brutality and total disrespect for the proud traditions of the Imperial Army, had already turned Heaven-only-knows how many innocent and patriotic recruits into embittered revolutionaries against his relative, the holy Czar.

It sounded like a speech he had long been eager to get off his chest, and I suspect he would have made the identical one had I been on trial for blasphemy or wetting my bed. Although my defender was plainly the sort of man who had more growing under his nose than inside his head, I saw the judge repeatedly nod in respectful agreement. However, that still did not dispose of the crime for which I stood trial.

Only when the captain had, at last, finished delivering his heartfelt harangue and seemed ready to sit down did he briefly take note of “the so-called defendant.” True, he conceded, perhaps a more experienced soldier might have tried to moderate his righteous anger. But as what I had done was so patently an attempt to defend the honor and security of the Czar, Captain Mikhailoff simply failed to comprehend why it was me and not the other man who was on trial. Much as I wanted to agree with my defender, even I had to admit that his argument lacked logic, not to mention common sense.

But to my astonishment, the judge showed himself to be totally persuaded by this line of reasoning. While I was let off with the most gentle of reprimands, Pyotr, my opponent, who hadn't been accused of anything, suddenly found himself reduced in rank. But that was not the last to be heard of him.

How much this verdict cost my brother, he never let on. For all I knew, my advocate may have defended me in all sincerity. But the outcome certainly made me a good deal more tolerant toward the all-pervasive atmosphere of corruption in the Russian army. Without this constant lubrication of the wheels, the most appalling injustices would have passed unnoticed, and men in positions of power might never have felt the slightest inducement to lift a finger for another soul.

Chapter 4: The Fall of ‘Haman’

After some months of basic training in the so-called “Convicts’ Company,” which Mordechai felt I was in danger of enjoying more than was appropriate for a boy of my refined background, I was unexpectedly transferred to the regimental tailor shop. Here out of eight men, two (including Glasnik) were actually tailors and therefore obliged to cover for the rest of us. However, no one complained because it was apparent that each of us must have had some pull with the
natchalstva
. Mordechai hoped that having me assigned to this platoon of 118 men, 42 of whom were Jews, would keep me out of further brawls and courts martial. (The biggest joke of all, as I read years later, was that at this very time the proportion of Jews in the Russian army and navy was almost forty percent greater than its proportion of the population. The reason for this I'll leave to greater philosophers to figure out.)

To my brother’s dismay, within less than a month I began to crave some outlet for my youthful energies and thirst for new experiences. Against Mordechai’s vehement advice, I applied successfully for a transfer to the 14th Company, which was under the command of my defender, Captain Mikhailoff. It was, after all, peacetime and while life in the infantry might have been a little more strenuous than smoking my pipe in the tailor shop, being among real soldiers was as exciting for me as going to summer camp would be to an American child.

Our noble Mikhailoff was a man who not only enjoyed life, but also did not begrudge others. He believed, for example, that in peacetime there was little sense in tormenting your men with a lot of useless exercises. So, while some companies were sent on field maneuvers, forced marches and other entertainments of that sort, our excellent captain took us to a shady spot in the woods where we were permitted to amuse ourselves with such leisure activities as trick riding and marksmanship. While we were well aware of our good fortune in having such a humane and easygoing company commander, we continued to talk among ourselves of the necessity of overthrowing our abominable Czar, Nicolai Alexandrovich, and abolishing such instruments of tyranny as the army.

In anticipation of the revolution, and thanks to Mikhailoff's generosity with ammunition, we soon became so handy with our rifles and horses that we routinely won a good many of those regimental competitions on whose outcomes our officers loved to place wagers. In fact, we did Captain Mikhailoff so proud that he was presently relieved of his command, promoted to colonel, and placed in charge of an important customs post on the Manchurian border where, it was understood, a man would have to be made of stone not to pile up money like manure.

Very well. We’d had a sensible and humane officer and instead of simply thanking our good fortune, we’d gone right on plotting the overthrow of his wretched relative. Now fate rewarded us for our zeal in wanting to liberate one hundred and thirty million of our countrymen with a new commanding officer.

On a cold Wednesday morning, we were promptly called into formation where we were allowed to shiver at attention for some time. Presently, our new boss introduced himself as Captain Fedorenko. He was unnaturally tall, and had shoulders like a barn door. Upon them rested a small Slavic head with a broad nose and little pig eyes. In fact, all the parts of his body seemed not to be quite in proportion so that when he walked, he looked not so much like a man as how you might picture the original
golem
. Before the day was out, his nickname among the Jewish soldiers was ‘
Haman’
because one of his first official acts was to deny some thirty five of us permission to attend the reading of the
Scroll of Esther
on the morning of
Purim
.

Before he even knew our faces, he let us know he was well aware that the 14th Company, under its previous commander, had become disgracefully lax, undisciplined and unsoldierly – a virtual vacation resort. Well, he was here to put an end to all that. Those of us who had forgotten we were soldiers whose bodies and souls belong to the Czar, would very quickly find ourselves “vacationing” in Siberia where we might get the chance to do some real soldiering against a race of yellow vermin laboring under the illusion that Asia belonged to them. In particular, he advised the Jews in his company to cease conducting themselves as though they were still in some synagogue of theirs. This final observation did not go down well with the boys in my platoon.

Not only did Haman put us through the kind of training schedule ordinarily imposed only on the Convicts’ Company, but he also let it be known that he was not afraid of us, singly or all together. In fact, he boasted that he had been transferred back here from Siberia, where he’d been perfectly happy, only because he had killed two men who’d made some threatening remarks to him. He sincerely hoped we didn’t think he would hesitate for one moment to do the same thing, again, if he had to. The worst that could happen to him would be merely a transfer back to his beloved Siberia. As a result, it was we soldiers who felt obliged to eat and sleep with our rifles close at hand in case Haman thought he heard any one of us use his name in an unflattering context.

To the great misfortune of my poor friend, Vassily Divanovsky, whom I had met when we were both raw recruits on the train to Petersburg, Haman had taken a singular dislike to him. Vassily – Vasya to his friends – couldn’t understand why Haman, who had already driven several of his men to suicide, should want to persecute him. “After all,” he told me, “I am an educated man, a graduate engineer, with a good knowledge of military fortifications. The Czar needs people like me. What’s more, I don't drink, I don’t get into fights, and I intend to obey every lawful command. So why should even the worst of officers have a quarrel with me?” (In justice to Haman, it must be said that, while he treated all his men with the same wholehearted barbarity, he always seemed to have a little bit extra left for those Jewish conscripts who lacked the money, influence, or common sense to get themselves out from under his iron thumb.)

Nothing could persuade Vasya to use his family’s connection to get himself transferred. He had, he told me, a domineering father who had tried to pressure him into an ‘advantageous’ marriage. To assert his independence, Vasya volunteered for military service.

But within weeks under Haman’s tyranny, Vasya’s features turned as gray as dust, and his skin barely clung to his bones. His hands shook uncontrollably, and his eyes bore the look of a man who would welcome death, the sooner the better.

Part of this may have been Vasya’s own fault. What terrible thing had he done? One day, in response to some trifling injustice, he had politely pointed out to the tyrant that, according to Army regulations, volunteers were exempt from the more menial tasks such as kitchen and latrine duty.

Haman received this information in a state of marvelous astonishment. Then he screamed, “Volunteer? I’ll show you, Jew, for what you volunteered!”

To begin with, Haman put Vasya into a solitary cell where, for 24 starved and sleepless hours, Vasya shivered like a skeleton. From there he was sent straight to the parade ground where the company was put through a long day of what Haman called “maneuvers,” none of which would have the slightest usefulness in combat. He soon drove Vasya to the kind of despair that could lead even the healthiest of men either to take his own life or undergo a momentary loss of self-control that would get him shot for “mutiny.”

Meanwhile, I had turned to my brother, Mordechai, who exercised his connections to get me transferred back to the 15th Company (that was previously known as the ‘Convicts’ Company,’ but which now had a decent
polkovnik
in the excellent Colonel Lakheff, and a large proportion of Jewish soldiers).

Early one evening, while some of us sat in a shady grove idly pitching pebbles into a tranquil pond, Vasya suddenly materialized before us, pale as fog. He drew me to one side and wept bitterly over his folly in having volunteered. If he could not get an immediate transfer out of the 14th, he would do something desperate.

I took the problem directly to Mordechai. But before proceeding on his advice, I thought it only right to tell Vasya what I had in mind to do. And to caution him that it was not without risk. That if I failed or, worse, Haman got wind of it, Vasya would suffer the consequences.

He said only, “Yakov, if you can get me out of the 14th, I will owe you nothing less than my life.” And he vowed he would not forget my “heroism” till he went to his grave.

Unfortunately, our Colonel Lakheff, who was related by marriage to the Czar, was about to take a month’s vacation in the Crimea. And since Vasya did not seem likely to survive another month of Haman’s benevolence, I had no choice but to seek him out that very night.

A trek through mountainous snow banks and stinging frost brought me to Lakheff’s mansion on Nevsky Prospekt. When I got there, I was dismayed to find the front yard packed with fine coaches, whose horses and drivers huddled and dozed under thick blankets of wool and snow.

I saw that I was intruding on some festive occasion. It seemed unlikely that, even if I managed to gain admission and found my colonel sober enough to hear me out, I would be able to draw his attention to the ill fortune of one young volunteer.

But having come this far, I also recalled that our good colonel, having married somewhat above his station, was in endless need of additional income so as not to disgrace his highborn wife. And that, in his elaborate network of graft, he needed people like my brother, both to protect his interests and, in case of a scandal, to absorb the full load of blame.

My arrival coincided with the exit of two portly civilians with cheeks like polished red apples, eyes dancing with satisfaction, and dabs of grease still clinging to uppermost of their several chins. As the doorkeeper scurried to awaken their driver, I slipped into the mansion, not at all confident I would emerge as lighthearted as the departing guests.