“Of course, Misha.”
Back in the saloon the boy collected up the dishes and took them to the small galley. As he dried the last enamel plate Zagorsky walked in and sat on the small box that held the cleaning materials.
“Did you believe what Misha said?”
The boy hesitated, blushing. “Why not? What he says makes sense.”
“They will work harder than they’ve ever worked in their lazy lives and for no more money. It will take years before any of it comes true.”
“So? What does it matter? They make sacrifices for their children’s sake. It’s like planting seeds. You have to wait for the corn to grow.”
Zagorsky laughed. “Who said that, boy?”
“Said what?”
“About planting seeds.”
“I said it. It’s true.”
“Would you do all that if there was a revolution in England?”
“Of course I would. All workers would.” He frowned. “But there’s no chance of a revolution in England.”
“Maybe one day you’ll have the chance. You’d fight with the workers, would you?”
“Of course.”
Zagorsky said softly, “Why don’t you stay here in Petrograd and help? It would be good experience for when your time comes.”
“I’ve signed on, Zag; I’d go to prison if I jumped ship.”
“They’ll never have the chance, boy, if you stay. You could walk off now and nobody could stop you.”
“There’s Royal Navy ratings at the dockyard gates.”
“So we don’t go out through the gates.”
“But you don’t believe in it, Zag. You think they won’t do it.”
The young man looked at the boy a long time before he spoke, and then he said, “Never believe what a man says, no matter who he is. Listen, but don’t believe. Listen for what’s believed in, what’s in his mind. That’s all that matters.” He paused. “Do you want to stay and help? It will be hard work, with lots of disappointments.”
“Would I be with you and Misha?”
“Maybe. But you’ve got to learn the language first. Not many Russians speak English, especially the kind you’d be working with.”
“Would they have me?”
Zagorsky nodded. “Yes. They’d have you. We need all the help we can get. Think about it tonight. If tomorrow you still want to help I’ll take you to see the right people.”
“But what good will I be? I can’t do anything.”
“I’ve watched you, Josef. You are a good organiser—and you’re honest. That’s enough.”
After three months the boy they called Josef could speak enough Russian to understand the orders he got and to hold a reasonable conversation. The Russian he learned was crude and ungrammatical, like the speech of his fellow workers. He saw Misha most days but seldom saw Zagorsky. He realised from what people said that the young man he called Zag so familiarly was important. Zag went to meetings of the Council of People’s Commissars, the sovnavkom, and mixed with leaders like Lenin and Dzerzhinski, who was the head of the newly formed Committee for Struggle Against the Counter-Revolution. The committee that became what people called the Cheka.
The boy learned his way around the backstreets of Petrograd, carrying messages and delivering batches of the latest issue of Pravda. At night he sat listening to the heated discussions on how long the Bolsheviks would last. Some gave them only a few days, others a month or two and a few, very few, said that the Bolsheviks would be the final victors in the ruthless struggle for power that was being waged in the Duma.
By December 1917 the Bolsheviks had taken control. Arrests, confiscations and house searches were common and there were numerous cases of violence by self-appointed bandit-revolutionaries. Drunkenness and disorder were widespread in the city and rumour had it that it was much the same in all big cities. A newspaper published a speech by Maxim Gorky which said openly that the Bolsheviks were already showing how they meant to rule the country. His final sentence was, “Does not Lenin’s government, as the Romanov government did, seize and drag off to prison all those who think differently?” But no figure arose who could successfully stop the ruthless surge to power of Lenin’s men. Resistance from any quarter was met by bringing out the workers on the streets. They seldom knew what they were demonstrating about but it had become part of their daily lives. For the Bolsheviks it was a warning to all those who opposed them that “power lay in the streets.”
There was a wide spectrum of resistance to the Bolsheviks, including many workers’ groups and political parties; almost all left-wing political parties were sworn enemies who recognised that the Bolsheviks’ struggle for power was just that, and no more. It was like a juggernaut out of control, its only policy repression of the opposition.
Josef saw Misha almost every evening. Misha liked the long rambling discussions that the group fell into every night. Analyses of personalities and policies, forecasts of a golden future or prophecies that nothing would change except a different group of despots who would behave like any Tsar. The boy always remembered Zagorsky’s advice. He listened and said nothing, watching their faces, sometimes recognising the false ring of praise for the new leaders from some obviously ambitious man. And sometimes he heard the echo of the deliberate incitement of an agent provocateur.
It was a hot summer evening when he had to deliver a letter to Zagorsky and he had been invited in, the Russian pointing to a wooden box that was used as a chair.
“Sit down, Josef. I want to talk to you.”
When Josef was perched on the box Zagorsky looked at his face.
“Are you busy with your errands?”
“Yes.”
“They tell me you can write in Russian now.”
“Not very well.”
“Well enough to make notes of the decisions at the committee meetings, yes?”
“Yes, I do that.”
“Misha thinks you should be made secretary of the committee. Official secretary. How would you feel about that?”
“What would the older men
