The Beauty and the Sorrow (55 page)

Over and above the general loathing of the war, increasingly vocal criticism of the war leadership and even of the Tsar himself has bubbled to the surface. Rumours about what has happened or possibly is still happening at court are particularly common: the murder of the notorious monk Rasputin, which was committed a month and a half ago, seems to reinforce the image of a corruption that goes right to the top.
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Much of this has passed Florence by, preoccupied as she has been by the deaths of two people close to her, but she does feel sorry for the Tsar, who can best be described as well-meaning but incompetent.

So yes, it is a bad winter. When the general sense of disquiet is added to their general lack of activity, it all leads to nervous tension, irritability and endless petty squabbles among the staff of the hospital unit. Florence, too, shares these feelings:

We seem to be waiting for something to happen. Things cannot continue as they are. Many questions are asked, but none can answer them. “Will the war continue?” “Will a separate peace be arranged between Russia and Germany?” “What will our Allies do in such an emergency?” …

It is a dull oppressive winter; the frost and ice do their best to numb our thoughts and hamper our movements.

SUNDAY
, 25
FEBRUARY
1917
Elfriede Kuhr’s grandmother faints outside the horse butcher’s in Schneidemühl

There is a butcher who sells horsemeat on the street where Elfriede lives. He is a Jew and his name is Herr Johr. Elfriede is well aware that there are people who dislike Jews but she is not one of them. Once she even started a fight with a boy who had called one of her Jewish friends a swine. Many Jews and even Poles live in the area and as far as Elfriede is concerned they are all Germans, even if of different kinds.

Unfortunately, Elfriede’s grandmother fainted today, outdoors, in the cold, outside Herr Johr’s shop. Some passers-by carried her inside and slowly she came to, lying on the sofa in Herr Johr’s living room. Her legs were so shaky, however, that Herr Johr felt it necessary to bring her home in his van. When they see their grandmother being carried to her bed and notice how pale and cold her face is, Elfriede and her brother are frightened. Fortunately, however, one of their neighbours is visiting and she makes their grandmother a cup of coffee. There is no longer any real coffee, of course, just ersatz made from roasted grain, but their neighbour does put real sugar in the cup rather than the artificial sweetener that is now usual. Elfriede’s grandmother drinks it and after a while begins to feel more herself: “Now I feel warm again, children.”

Why did she faint? Possibly, like many other people, she has been working too hard. Or possibly, like everyone else, she has been eating too little.

But Elfriede cannot help feeling anxious and when it is time to do her physics homework she moves into the bedroom so that she can keep an eye on her grandmother while she does it. School is not uppermost in her mind just now, anyway. A little under a week ago she and a friend had gone ice skating on a flooded meadow down by the river; there were masses of people there, all skating round and round to scratchy music from a wind-up gramophone. While she was there she bumped into the
young lieutenant she had met for the first time on the stairs at the party given by her school friend’s big sister. His name is Werner Waldecker. Quite by chance she had met him on the street shortly after the party and got into conversation with him—an exchange that had ended with him kissing her hand and expressing the hope that they would meet again. And they did, five days ago on the frozen meadow. Afterwards, by which time it was getting dark, he took her to the Konditorei Fliegner where, though there were no éclairs, they drank mulled wine and ate sugar pastries and she was very happy. Lieutenant Waldecker walked her home and tried to kiss her on the steps of the porch. She had slipped shyly from his embrace and disappeared into the house, though she later regretted doing so.

Not much is happening at the moment according to the war map they have hanging in the classroom. Nothing of any note has happened in Africa or Asia for several weeks. Yesterday, unfortunately, 289 men capitulated in Likuyu in German East Africa, and several Turkish trenches were taken by the British south-west of Kut al-Amara in Mesopotamia. That is all. Things are also quiet in Italy and the Balkans; nor is anything new happening on the Western Front, apart from the occasional raid. It is only the Eastern Front that is providing the newspapers with anything more than the occasional notice, and almost all the fighting there has been concentrated in one area—Romania—for months. That part of the map is now a patchwork of small black, white and red flags and there could well be a major victory there soon. The last was on 6 December when Bucharest fell and the children were given a day off school. Elfriede used that sudden holiday to go for a walk.

SUNDAY
, 18
MARCH
1917
Andrei Lobanov-Rostovsky tries to get into the Hotel Astoria in Petrograd

“Just follow the general trend,” the doctor had said. It is two o’clock in the morning and bitterly cold. Lobanov-Rostovsky leaves Anton, his batman, to deal with the luggage at the station and sets off directly for the hotel. Oddly, there are neither taxi-cabs nor horse-drawn cabs available outside the station and he has to go on foot. There is something strange
going on, something that does not fit. He passes armed patrols on the dark streets and they “eye him suspiciously.” He passes a burnt-down police station. On Morskaja, the fashionable shopping street, he notes clear evidence of the disturbances: the shop windows are smashed, the shops have been looted and there are bullet holes on the walls of the buildings.

Lobanov-Rostovsky was, of course, aware of the disturbances that had broken out on 8 March when women took to the streets to protest about bread shortages.
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And he had already witnessed trouble at the railway station in Kiev, where a mob broke into the first-class dining room and, to the accompaniment of much roaring and yelling, tore down the portrait of the Tsar from the wall. Nicholas II abdicated three days ago. Lobanov-Rostovsky heard the news last Thursday as he was leaving hospital: an officer came up to him and passed on the sensational information—in French, to be discreet. In his journal Lobanov-Rostovsky greets the news with optimism: “A new Emperor, or a Regent more energetic and intelligent, and victory is assured.”

This is possibly a hard-won hope. He has been ill with malaria since the turn of the year and was only discharged from hospital on 15 March, the day before the abdication. When he reported back to his battalion he was told he was being sent to the reserve battalion in Petrograd. The news filled him with despair since he had heard that troops there were being sent out onto the streets to shoot demonstrators and strikers. He met a doctor, who tried to calm him down and asked if he was thinking of taking his own life. Lobanov-Rostovsky then confessed to his doubts: “It’s the imbecility of the government which is causing this revolution. It’s not the people’s fault, and yet I am sent to Petrograd to fire on the people.” The doctor consoled him and gave him a piece of advice that stuck in his mind: “Just follow the general trend and everything will work out all right.”

Lobanov-Rostovsky arrives at the Hotel Astoria, where his uncle and aunt are staying. The hotel shows the marks of the disturbances, of street fighting even, since the walls are pockmarked by bullets. The large windows
on the ground floor have been smashed and badly boarded up. The lobby is completely dark and the swing doors are locked. No one appears when he pounds on them. Strange. He goes round to a side door, knocks on it and is immediately surrounded by a group of armed and aggressive sailors. They aim their weapons at his chest and fire threatening questions at him: “Where’s your pass?” they ask. He replies that he does not have one. “Why are you carrying a revolver?” A young naval lieutenant arrives and manages to convince the armed men to let Lobanov-Rostovsky go: “Comrades, let this man out. He has just arrived and didn’t know there was a revolution.”

Once out on the street again, Lobanov-Rostovsky hurries back to the railway station to drink tea and wait for the dawn.

He tries again at about eight o’clock. Factory whistles are sounding in the distance. Snow is falling from a grey morning sky. The temperature has risen and the streets are wet and slushy. Apart from the traces of fighting, everything looks almost normal. Crowds of people stream past on their way to work as usual. There is one thing, however, that is different: there are patches of red everywhere, both on the buildings and on the people. All the passers-by are wearing something red: a rosette or a paper flower or just a piece of cloth tucked into a buttonhole. Even the motor cars and elegant horse-drawn carriages are decorated with something red, as are the house fronts and the windows. The large pieces of cloth hanging on the facades of the houses appear almost black in the weak morning light.

Lobanov-Rostovsky gains entry to the hotel this time. The lobby offers a sorry sight: shards of glass and smashed furniture everywhere and the thick red carpets are covered with frozen puddles of water. People are streaming in and out. An excited group is clustered around a table in one corner—they are recruiting for some kind of association of radical officers. The heating has stopped working and it is the same temperature indoors as out on the street. He can find no trace of his relations. “Everything seemed to be disorganised, and nobody knew anything.”

Although he couldn’t have known it, some of the bloodiest clashes of the whole revolution had taken place in the luxury Hotel Astoria. That was where many of the higher-ranking officers and their families were staying and someone, or perhaps more than one, had fired out on passing demonstrators. The demonstrators had responded with machine-gun fire, after which armed men had stormed the lobby and heavy fighting
had broken out amid the crystal chandeliers and mirrored walls. Many officers had been shot or bayoneted to death and the hotel’s wine cellar had been looted. (It was quite usual during these days in Petrograd for acts of genuine indignation and protest to be mixed with vandalism and outright criminality.)
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Lobanov-Rostovsky ventures out again onto the slushy streets. As evening approaches he is not much wiser about the situation, but he has located his uncle and aunt. They had fled from the Astoria to the Admiralty during the disturbances—and found heavy fighting raging there too. As to the reserve battalion of the Guards Regiment he was supposed to be joining, he receives completely contradictory pieces of information:

[The unit had] refused to join the revolution and had been completely exterminated; it had been among the first units to join the rebellion, and the soldiers had killed off all the officers; all the officers were safe, and so on.

Not without some anxiety he decides to take a taxi to the barracks the following morning and report for service. “Just follow the general trend and everything will work out all right.”

SATURDAY
, 24
MARCH
1917
Andrei Lobanov-Rostovsky is elected officer by the soldiers’ committee

There are signs of disintegration everywhere. The soldiers are sloppily dressed, do not salute and show no respect. He has effectively been a prisoner in the barracks, waiting for the soldiers’ committee to come to a decision. Are they going to approve him?

The decision came today. Yes, they have decided that he is to serve as their officer. That does not mean he has the same status as before: as the leader of the battalion explains to him, officers are like constitutional
monarchs, they have formal responsibility but no real power. Lobanov-Rostovsky feels relieved—if he had not received their approval he might well have been imprisoned instead. Or even worse. He writes:

It appeared that the deciding voice was that of a sergeant who had served under my orders and told the committee about the time at Rejitsa in 1916 when, on my own responsibility and against the orders of the commander of the regiment, I had given my men permission to go on leave. Presently two members of the committee came to see me, informed me of their decision, and asked me very politely if I would do them the honour of remaining with the battalion. That same evening we learned that five officers of the Moscow Regiment who had been elected by their soldiers the day before had been murdered by them during the night.

MONDAY
, 26
MARCH
1917
Rafael de Nogales takes part in the First Battle of Gaza

Rafael de Nogales has not slept a wink for a day and a half and he is exhausted. He has been deep behind the enemy lines leading a patrol with orders to find and blow up the pipeline for drinking water the British have built from the Suez Canal, up through Sinai and all the way to the front line outside the old coastal city of Gaza. Over the last thirty-six hours they have covered some ninety to a hundred miles of desert terrain and their mission has been a miserable failure: they failed even to find the pipeline. When he and his companions get back to camp the first thing he is intending to do is get some sleep.

Things are anything but calm, however. All available units are preparing for battle because there have been reports that a significant British force is crossing the big wadi
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which lies in front of the line of defence at Gaza. The sight of all this activity is enough to give de Nogales renewed energy: “The overpowering tiredness I was feeling disappeared in an instant.” He gets a fresh horse and rides off ready for new duties.