for fear their remarks would be reported and they would be punished; but today they did not seem to care.
The speaker who made the greatest impression was Yakov, a tall man with shoulders like a bear. He stood on the table beside Grigori with tears in his eyes. “When they told us to fire, I didn’t know what to do,” he said. He seemed unable to raise his voice, and the room went quiet as the other men strained to hear him. “I said: ‘God, please guide me now,’ and I listened in my heart, but God sent me no answer.” The men were silent. “I raised my rifle,” Yakov said. “The captain was screaming: ‘Shoot! Shoot!’ But who should I shoot at? In Galicia we knew who our enemies were because they were firing at us. But today in the square no one was attacking us. The people were mostly women, some with children. Even the men had no weapons.”
He fell silent. The men were as still as stones, as if they feared that any movement might break the spell. After a moment Isaak prompted him. “What happened next, Yakov Davidovich?”
“I pulled the trigger,” Yakov said, and the tears ran from his eyes into his bushy black beard. “I didn’t even aim the gun. The captain was screaming at me and I fired just to shut him up. But I hit a woman. A girl, really; about nineteen, I suppose. She had a green coat. I shot her in the chest, and the blood went all over the coat, red on green. Then she fell down.” He was weeping openly now, speaking in gasps. “I dropped my gun and tried to go to her, to help her, but the crowd went for me, punching and kicking, though I hardly felt it.” He wiped his face with his sleeve. “I’m in trouble, now, for losing my rifle.” There was another long pause. “Nineteen,” he said. “I think she must have been about nineteen.”
Grigori had not noticed the door opening, but suddenly Lieutenant Kirillov was there. “Get off that damn table, Yakov,” he shouted. He looked at Grigori. “You, too, Peshkov, you troublemaker.” He turned and spoke to the men, sitting on benches at their trestle tables. “Return to your barracks, all of you,” he said. “Anyone still in this room one minute from now gets a flogging.”
No one moved. The men stared surlily at the lieutenant. Grigori wondered if this was how a mutiny started.
But Yakov was too lost in his misery to realize what a moment of drama he had created; he got down clumsily from the table, and the tension was released. Some of the men close to Kirillov stood up, looking sullen but scared. Grigori remained defiantly standing on the table a few moments longer, but he sensed that the men were not quite angry enough to turn on an officer, so in the end he got down. The men started to leave the room. Kirillov remained where he was, glaring at everyone.
Grigori returned to barracks and soon the bell rang for lights-out. As a sergeant, he had the privilege of a curtained niche at the end of his platoon’s dormitory. He could hear the men speaking in low voices.
“I won’t shoot women,” said one.
“Me neither.”
A third voice said: “If you don’t, some of these bastard officers will shoot you for disobedience!”
“I’m going to aim to miss,” said another voice.
“They might see.”
“You only have to aim a bit above the heads of the crowd. No one can be sure what you’re doing.”
“That’s what I’m going to do,” said another voice.
“Me, too.”
“Me, too.”
We’ll see, Grigori thought as he drifted off to sleep. Brave words came easily in the dark. Daylight might tell a different story.
On Monday Grigori’s platoon was marched the short distance along Samsonievsky Prospekt to the Liteiny Bridge and ordered to prevent demonstrators crossing the river to the city center. The bridge was four hundred yards long, and rested on massive stone piers set into the frozen river like stranded icebreakers.
This was the same job they had had on Friday, but the orders were different. Lieutenant Kirillov briefed Grigori. He spoke these days as if he was in a constant bad temper, and perhaps he was: officers probably disliked being lined up against their own countrymen just as much as the men did. “No marchers are to cross the river, either by the bridge or on the ice, do you understand? You will shoot people who flout your instructions.”
Grigori hid his contempt. “Yes, Excellency!” he said smartly.
Kirillov repeated the orders, then disappeared. Grigori thought the lieutenant was scared. Doubtless he feared being held responsible for what happened, whether his orders were obeyed or defied.
Grigori had no intention of obeying. He would allow the leaders of the march to engage him in discussion while their followers crossed the ice, exactly as it had played out on Friday.
However, early in the morning his platoon was joined by a detachment of police. To his horror, he saw that they were led by his old enemy Mikhail Pinsky. The man did not appear to be suffering from the shortage of bread: his round face was fatter than ever, and his police uniform was tight around the middle. He was carrying a loud- hailer. His weasel-faced sidekick, Kozlov, was nowhere in sight.
“I know you,” Pinsky said to Grigori. “You used to work at the Putilov factory.”
“Until you had me conscripted,” Grigori said.
“Your brother is a murderer, but he escaped to America.”
“So you say.”
“No one is going to cross the river here today.”
“We shall see.”
“I expect full cooperation from your men, is that understood?”
Grigori said: “Aren’t you afraid?”
“Of the rabble? Don’t be stupid.”
“No, I mean of the future. Suppose the revolutionaries get their way. What do you think they will do to you? You’ve spent your life bullying the weak, beating people up, harassing women, and taking bribes. Don’t you fear a day of retribution?”
Pinsky pointed a gloved finger at Grigori. “I’m reporting you as a damned subversive,” he said, and he walked away.
Grigori shrugged. It was not as easy as it used to be for the police to arrest anyone they liked. Isaak and others might mutiny if Grigori was jailed, and the officers knew it.
The day started quietly, but Grigori noted that few workers were on the streets. Many factories were closed because they could not get fuel for their steam engines and furnaces. Other places were on strike, the employees demanding more money to pay inflated prices, or heating for ice-cold workshops, or safety rails around dangerous machinery. It looked as if almost no one was actually going to work today. But the sun rose cheerfully, and people were not going to stay indoors. Sure enough, at midmorning Grigori saw, coming along Samsonievsky Prospekt, a large crowd of men and women in the ragged clothes of industrial workers.
Grigori had thirty men and two corporals. He had stationed them in four lines of eight across the road, blocking the end of the bridge. Pinsky had about the same number of men, half on foot and half on horseback, and he placed them at the sides of the road.
Grigori peered anxiously at the oncoming march. He could not predict what would happen. On his own he could have prevented bloodshed, by offering only token resistance then letting the demonstrators pass. But he did not know what Pinsky was going to do.
The marchers came nearer. There were hundreds of people-no, thousands. They were men and women in the blue tunics and ragged coats of industrial workers. Most wore red armbands or red ribbons. Their banners read Down with the Tsar and Bread, Peace, and Land. This was no longer merely a protest, Grigori concluded: it had become a political movement.
As the leaders came nearer, he sensed the tightening anxiety among his waiting men.
He walked forward to meet the marchers. At their head, to his surprise, was Varya, the mother of Konstantin. Her gray hair was tied up in a red scarf, and she carried a red flag on a hefty stick. “Hello, Grigori Sergeivich,” she said amiably. “Are you going to shoot me?”
“No, I’m not,” he replied. “But I can’t speak for the police.”
Although Varya stopped, the others came on, pressed from behind by thousands more. Grigori heard Pinsky urge his mounted men forward. These horseback policemen, called Pharaohs, were the most hated section of the
