Blood Red Snow White Read online

  * * *

  It was nighttime. Arthur had spent the afternoon in his flat writing up his stories, but now he slipped into his old greatcoat, and as he ventured outside again, he was assaulted by the brutally low temperature.

  Snow lay across the city’s roads, swept by the wind into fantastical shapes and then frozen hard by the imperious cold. Arthur was weary, and hungry, too, but his work was not yet done for the day. He had to send his stories back home, and to do that meant asking permission from the censor who was in charge of such matters.

  On foot, he made his way slowly across the city to where this man worked, and found no guard on the door. It was late and the building was deserted, so he walked the empty corridors, calling out now and again for anyone who might hear.

  Finally, he saw light coming from under a door ahead of him. Thinking it had to be the man he had come to see, to approve his stories, he opened the door.

  There inside, was what he had been looking for.

  Not the man he needed, but something else entirely.

  A woman stood with her back to him, bent over something he could not see. She turned and he saw it was the beautiful girl from the school. Light from a single candle lit her face softly, and she smiled.

  In one hand she held a wooden spoon, and now he saw that she had been stirring something in a pot over a small stove.

  Arthur stepped into the room, and waved his stories.

  “Do you know where the censor is?”

  The girl shook her head. Her short dark hair swung, half covering one lovely eye. She held the spoon delicately, as if it were some kind of magic wand.

  “This is what you want,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  She nodded at the pot, and Arthur found himself drawn toward her. He looked inside.

  “Potatoes,” she murmured, as if it were the most beautiful word in the world. Her eyes lit up and Arthur realized how very hungry he was. He stood no more than a weak moment’s decision away from her, and looked into her eyes.

  This is what you want.

  And that was how the young writer found love, just when he had stopped looking for it.

  DARKNESS INTO DAYLIGHT

  THE WORLD WAS CHANGING. Nothing could stop that. There can be no magic by daylight, it is a thing of the dark and shadows and the black and white of nighttime, and just as that is true, it is also true that fairy tales cannot live in the modern world of color.

  The time for princes and tsars and grand duchesses and especially holy madmen was gone. In its place came a world of war and revolution, of tanks and telephones, of murder and assassination.

  The bear had already become what it had been waiting to be, and the men who set it on its journey changed, too. Lev became Trotsky, Vladimir took the name Lenin, and they stepped into a bright and furious modern world—blood red, and snow white.

  PART II

  ONE NIGHT IN MOSCOW

  BEFORE

  TWELVE HUNDRED FEET ABOVE the Baltic Sea it is dark and cold. The sun is eclipsed by a huge bank of snow clouds that are about to birth themselves over the Russian coastline. The snow falls, but slowly, flickering its way from the heavens down toward the ground, and the city.

  Petrograd. 1917.

  Three years ago, on the outbreak of war with the Kaiser, the noble city of St. Petersburg changed its name to something less German sounding. Now with a good Slavic name, the city is changing again, but this time something more important than a name is at stake. It’s a city struggling to break free of the past; like the snow clouds, it’s about to give birth to something new, a new version of itself, modern and clever. But, like a calf stuck in knee-deep mud, the going is difficult.

  It is only late afternoon, but already it’s dusk. Shadows spread, along the wide, wide streets, and narrow alleys alike. People, gray people, flit like sewer rats, gone as soon as they’re seen, each with some dreadful history of their own to take part in. There’s a man who strangled his neighbor for a piece of moldy bread; there’s a woman who left her crying baby in a bundle by the river because she could not feed it.

  A few fires smolder at street corners, other figures hunched around them, silent and blind. The city seems deserted, but it’s not. There is life; there are people, but they’re out of sight, in once beautiful halls, talking about the life and death of a nation.

  Having left one of these meetings, a young Englishman called Arthur makes his way home across the breadth of the city, from the Tauride Palace in the East, to his flat in Glinka Street in the West. Though he is English he is no stranger to the city and knows it well, from the gaudy domes of the Church of our Saviour on Spilled Blood, to the brooding mass of the Peter and Paul Fortress in the river, from the newly built Astoria Hotel to the Summer Garden.

  His way takes him down some of the most impressive streets in Petrograd, but now even these broad avenues are dwarfed by the painful emptiness of a square so big he can barely see the far side. The Champ de Mars.

  It’s here the snowflakes hit first, joining their dead relations already lying in the square, where, with no sun to shine and make it sparkle, the snow forms a dull white blanket across the city. It’s here, too, that one flake lands by an extraordinary chance on the barrel of a revolver. The revolver is held in the hand of a cavalryman, riding his horse hard across the square.

  Arthur is caught by the sight of the solitary horseman and stops in his tracks. He watches the rider for a few more seconds, when it occurs to him that man and beast are heading in his direction.

  “No,” he says aloud, “no one’s interested in me,” though there’s not a soul to hear. But talking helps to keep him warm, or keep his mind off the cold, at least. He sets off again, and as he moves, he sees the horseman change direction, steering toward him. There is no mistake.

  The horse covers the last few yards in a flurry of hoof and flying snow, and comes skidding to a halt.

  Arthur opens his mouth, but before he can speak, finds himself staring at the mouth of a gun.

  He freezes, and does precisely nothing, during which time he sees beyond the barrel of the gun the sharply trimmed mustache on the cavalryman’s face. He notices the fine braid on his regimental greatcoat, the snow unmelted on his fur hat, and likewise the snow unmelted on the barrel of the revolver.

  The rider waves the gun a fraction, staring at Arthur as if he has the keys to the world. Then, his horse pulling beneath him, he shouts.

  “For the people, or against the people?”

  Arthur stares back from under his own fur hat, his own greatcoat feeling as thin and useless as gossamer, faced with the prospect of a bullet. He opens his mouth again, and this time some words came out, though they’re not of his control.

  “I am English,” he says.

  The horseman looks at Arthur intently, hesitating. The tip of the gun lifts toward the Englishman’s head slightly and he closes his eyes.

  “Long live England!”

  The rider laughs and puts his gun away.

  “Long live England,” he shouts, salutes, then gallops away across the snow.

  Arthur starts to breathe again. He pulls the brim of his hat down a little further against the snow, and makes his way across to the far side of the Champ de Mars. He smiles.

  3:45 P.M.

  A YEAR AND A HALF HAS PASSED. Arthur is walking home again, but home is not in Glinka Street anymore. He is not even in Petrograd now, but Moscow. He has taken a room in the only hotel open to the public, the Elite, where a gaggle of foreigners like him are clinging to whatever it was that brought them to Russia in the first place.

  A lot has happened in eighteen months, and as he pushes through the doors into the lobby, he does not smile.

  He keeps his head down, but there they are as usual; the doorman and a girl of about nine who always hangs around him: his daughter, Kashka.

  The doorman has many children. His eldest son is away in the army somewhere, and the girl is the youngest of five. As usual, the doorman nods suspiciously
at the young foreigner, and as usual the girl smiles and waves at him. Then she asks her question, as she always does.

  “Please, sir. When will the war end?”

  Why she asks him and not her father, he has no idea. Maybe it is something to do with being foreign, with being English. The Russians see the English as rulers of the world, and as allies. Together they have been fighting the same war against Germany for four years. It’s Arthur’s belief that England can help Russia see her way through the Revolution and remain strong. If Russia stays strong, he has always believed, she will be able to help fight Germany, and then the war might end sooner. And then Geoff might come home, and their mother will have her sons back, safe and sound. And the doorman’s daughter might get her big brother back, too.

  He looks over to where she stands on the threshold of the doorman’s tiny office, and gives the answer he always gives.

  “Soon, Kashka, soon.”

  Through his articles for the Daily News he’s been working hard to get England to understand Russia better. Or had been, but everything changes eventually. Everything.

  He looks at his pocket watch.

  Four in the afternoon. He has six hours left.

  * * *

  He pads up the stairwell, once opulent but now filthy and uncared for, and down the corridor on the second floor to his room.

  He fumbles briefly for the key in his pocket and is about to unlock the door when he stops himself and remembers what he’s supposed to do. He checks the door jamb for the tiny slip of paper he put there when he left.

  It’s still in place.

  “Robert, you worry too much,” he says, thinking of his friend, but he’s still not smiling. He pushes into his room, barely tidier than the city itself, and collapses on the bed, where, without even taking his boots off, he wastes one whole delicious hour in sleep.

  4:30 P.M.

  THOUGH HIS BODY RESTS, his mind does not, and tortures him.

  The unsettled streets of the city only serve to heighten his unsettled nerves, and bring back all sorts of memories. Bad memories.

  He has often wondered why it is that some things stay with you and others do not. There are moments from his life, from as far back as early childhood, that he can see as if they happened yesterday.

  * * *

  A fishing trip with his father, rambling in the hills over Coniston, swimming in the Duddon. Being taught to ice-skate at the age of four by a Russian prince. Kropotkin, that was his name. How could you forget a name like that? The very same Kropotkin who is now an elderly anarchist. Arthur has met him once, Prince Anarchy, but was unable to see the man he met at the age of four. Nevertheless, there was still kindness in his eyes.

  And then there are things that stay with you for a different reason, things you wish you could wash from your mind, but, like blood, are hard to wash out. The screams of a wounded hare his father had shot on a hunt; its unearthly shrieks rang in his ears for days, it seemed. Now it appears that among all the horrors he has witnessed since the Revolution began, one is going to haunt his dreams for the rest of his life.

  He’d seen bad things before. He’d made several trips to the Russian front to report for the News, and had seen men half dead, the reek of decay already on them, as some wound or other festered and stank beneath dirty bandages.

  When the Revolution happened, that February in Petrograd, he’d had a ringside seat. He’d been swept along by the thrill of it all, like the rest of the city. The surge of newfound freedom was infectious; the air was filled with a spirit of togetherness which was hard to ignore. There was fighting, of course, though what Arthur had seen was more chaotic than dangerous.

  Nevertheless, he’d dodged falling grenades, and stooped beneath the whistle of hapless rifle fire, all issuing from unseen assailants fighting on unknown orders.

  He’d watched from the window of his flat one gray and snowy afternoon and seen the Revolution, or one part of it at least, take place before his very eyes. There’d been sporadic shooting in the square outside the Mariinsky Theatre all day. Anyone caught out in the open had rushed across, trying to duck under the bullets, running with their arms around their heads as if being chased by bees.

  Still, Arthur hadn’t stopped to think of the danger, either to himself or to anyone else. The porter told him there was a police machine gun on the roof of the theater, and another on their own roof, too. These were answered by rifle shots from revolutionaries hidden in surrounding buildings; their target not the theatre, but the building that lay beyond it across the canal; the Litovsky Castle. Inside, soldiers from the Lithuanian Regiment, still faithful to the Tsar, were under siege.

  Arthur watched from the window, notebook in hand, until after an hour or two of standoff, a postal car hurtled into view around the corner of Glinka Street. It careered wildly across the snow, but the driver expertly skidded to a stop. The small yellow motor van sported a large red flag, which looked to be silk. That was typical of a revolutionary. Now its purpose became clear, as the car swung around and Arthur saw a machine gun lying propped up in the rear. Two men hauled the beast around and a third fed it a huge belt of ammunition. It began to vomit bullets toward the castle, a grim-looking building with squat round towers at its front.

  The machine-gun fire from the car was answered by a stuttering noise from the roof above Arthur’s head, and now he knew the porter had not been lying. Sensing the danger, the driver of the car sped away again, out of sight behind the far side of the theatre. As it went, the men in the back sprayed shots aimlessly. There was a loud triple crack by Arthur’s head and he fell backward. Dazed, he got to his feet to see the glass of his window still intact, though bullets had obviously raked the stonework right outside.

  The firefight continued all afternoon, until, in the early evening, with the castle burning, the soldiers inside gave themselves up.

  Arthur scribbled notes for the newspaper, keeping one eye on the square below him. His heart pounded from the fright of the near miss, but he felt exhilarated, and a kind of fearlessness came into him. He pulled on his greatcoat, a souvenir he’d picked up on a trip to the front; once a Tsarist officer’s. To avoid misunderstandings, he’d cut off all the insignia and braids, and was left with a superbly warm garment that despite his height swept right down to his ankles. Shoving his fur hat on his head, he made his way out into the new revolutionary world, hungry for a story. This was the front line of history, here, now, and it made his blood beat to think of it.

  He walked north up Glinka Street toward the bridge over the canal, and across the water saw a group of revolutionary soldiers. They were at ease, and Arthur smiled to see them laughing and joking, gently punching each other’s shoulders, as if oblivious of any danger. Arthur crossed the bridge, thinking to interview them, when he saw another figure in the middle of the group. From his uniform, Arthur could see he was an officer, and now he understood. A street door banged in the wind. The officer had been dragged outside. The soldiers were pushing him from one to another, as if playing a schoolyard game. They laughed again.

  Arthur was halfway across the bridge, when they pushed the officer out to the edge of the quayside. He obviously knew what was expected of him, for he made no attempt to run. One of the revolutionaries stepped forward and lifted his arm as if pointing at the Tsarist.

  There was a bang, and at the same moment, the top of the officer’s head disappeared in a cloud of red pulp. The revolutionary dropped his arm and cordite smoked from the barrel of his pistol into the February dusk.

  The thrill that had been coursing through Arthur’s blood died as the soldier did, and he thought he was going to be sick. He stood there for an age, unaware that the revolutionaries had spotted him and were shouting at him. Somehow, the fact that he seemed to be ignoring them worked in his favor.

  They got bored and wandered off.

  Eventually, Arthur found his way home, went to sleep, and had the nightmare that he’s having again today, where, with infinite slowness, he w
atches the officer’s brains float away in the wind like a red mist, across the canal, and out to the bay.

  5:05 P.M.

  ARTHUR WAKES FROM HIS SLEEP. He rolls onto his side and swings his feet to the floor, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

  Five past five. Under five hours left. Then he has to go and meet Robert, and by then it will be too late to change his mind.

  * * *

  He goes to the window. Outside, is a rare sight. Moscow in the sunshine. When it’s hot in Russia, it’s very hot; it’s just that he’s discovered that the winter lasts for nine months and the other three seasons fight it out for the rest.

  Snow is always in his mind. So much of everything he can remember about his life in Russia is painted on a backdrop of snow, and a cold that’s hard to imagine unless you’ve felt it yourself. At the Galician front one winter he saw soldiers frozen solid where they stood, like pale white statues that might, against the odds, return to life at any moment. None of them ever did.

  He’s formed the opinion that little can have changed in warfare since Napoleon tried to capture Moscow. The great French General was beaten by the winter rather than the Russian army. Napoleon, the master tactician, should have known better, but no one seems to have learned from the lesson, and from what Arthur can tell the cold and hunger is killing more Russian soldiers than the war ever has.

  Even in the heat of July, snow is never far from Arthur’s mind. How wonderful it would be to be cool! Last winter, when the hunger was at its worst in the city, he took his rod to the Neva and joined the others fishing through holes in the ice. He caught enough one day to feed a family, which is exactly what he did, giving all but one perch to the porter. The porter had said nothing, but later, his wife had come upstairs and hugged Arthur, tears running freely down her face.