Assassination of E. Hemingway

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

“What happened back there? Why did we have to leave in such a hurry?”

“The Black Priest informed on you, Pasha. Word came to us that soldiers were on their way to arrest you. They would’ve turned you over to the Okhrana, the type of men who murdered your father. Their interrogation techniques aren’t subtle. Your uncle—”

“What will happen to him, Kalya? I know he told me, but I’m asking you, why did he stay behind?”

“It will not end well for him. He knows that. He needed somebody to deliver that report you’re carrying. He's too old now.”

“One day, I had an uncle I’d never met. I met a priest, my father’s twin brother. The next day….” Pasha took a deep breath. “I’ll never see him again, will I?”

“Pasha, that’s why you’re here. With me. You are the chance to fulfill the destiny your father and uncle dedicated themselves to.”

My father? Pasha wondered. What did he ever do, except drink and fight?

He gave Kalya a questioning gaze and wondered. Why should I trust this man? From villages like mine, Russians naturally distrust strangers, an instinct based on centuries of oppression. But this man seems different. My uncle trusted this man, Kalya. Pasha decided to trust Kayla too.

“How do you know my uncle?” The two of you give a salute instead of the sign of the cross. That’s strange for a priest.”

“It feels like I’ve always known Father Ivanovich, your uncle. I was in prison for stealing one of the Tzar’s chickens.” Kalya laughed. “That’s an expression, boy, a phrase that stands for anything the Tzar and his sycophants care to pin on one of us.” He brushed a leaf from his jacket sleeve. “When they let me out, I only had the rags I was wearing. I had no food and no place to sleep. A huge man in a blue cassock appeared in a downpour and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.”

“Father Ivanovich—Gennady—told me to call him Genya. He told me Jesus commanded him to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit men in prison. That was years ago.”

“Did he ever talk about his brother…my father?”

“He talked about a brother, a twin, who lived beyond the mountains to the East. He always had a wistful expression when he mentioned your father’s name. But ha, aren’t we Russians always depressed about something?” Kalya said, maybe hoping the remark might lessen the intensity.

With a deep sigh, Kayla continued. “Your Papa and Uncle believed in something beyond the church. They studied Karl Marx, who wrote something akin to something from the Bible.”

“I’m not religious, Kayla. What do you mean?”

“The Acts of the Apostles describes a similar idea of a communal system where goods were to be distributed according to need.

In the following days, Pasha dropped his reserve and began to tell Kalya everything. Something broke inside. The words poured out. He told Kalya about his guilt at killing his mother during his own birth. He lived with that accusation, fingers pointed at him every day in the village. He told Kalya about learning to avoid the fury of a man with too much drink, which seemed to be most of the time. He told Kalya he loved his father anyway.

“In the end, Papa gave me a map and directions to escape.” When he was finished talking g, he was shaking, Kalya resting a hand gently on Pasha’s shoulder.

They sat on the starboard side railing. It was quiet as the boat drifted downstream, occasionally bumping a log or objects in the water.

“Genya – you uncle – told me about their early years. The church decided. One would become a priest, the other to remain in Odilsk.”

“I had no idea,” Pasha said. “Papa never mentioned such a story, and my grandparents were dead when I was born.”

The boat shifted in the current. A light breeze kept mosquitoes at bay.

“Your father carried out his part of the bargain. Since your uncle was born minutes first, your father told the priests to take the eldest brother.”

“Was that true?”

“Does it make any difference? Your Papa fell in love with your mother and merely shrugged the choice off.” Kalya stopped as if to choose the correct words. “The best day of his life was the day you were born. The worst came two days later when your mother died, wrapped in blood-soaked blankets.”

“How do you know all this?”

Waiting for an answer, Pasha looked around. The barge was 18 meters long by six meters wide. It was built with a flat bottom, especially for the river. The hold and cabin occupied the center, allowing them to talk while strolling around the deck.

Pasha watched the man at the bow using a tall pole to keep the barge from the riverbank. The oarsman was a hoary-looking man with white hair. After several laps around the barge with Kalya, Pasha got a nod in return as they passed.

“I visited your village from time to time, meeting with your father,” Kayla finally said. “I watched you grow. I watched you play, then take on the work of a man.” Kalya took a deep breath. “There’s much to explain. In a few hours, we will reach the next dock. Three men and a woman will join, and your education will begin. We will talk more when we’re all together. For now, sleep, my young Comrade.”

“I want to hear more about my uncle and father. I want to know why you were in our village.”

“Soon, Pasha. I will tell you soon.”

Pasha may have slept. He wasn’t sure. His life’s past and future merged in the layers between sleep and awake, that twilight area in which neither sleep nor awake exists. Yet, it was a place where he noticed things off to the side, where certain truths reside and can be glimpsed.

In the early morning light, Pasha stood on the deck the following day, head tilted back, breathing in the fresh air. He sensed footsteps.

“Dobroye utro, good morning, young Pasha.” Kalya handed out a mug, steam rising in the morning chill. “Strong tea, krepkiy chay, fitting on a morning like this.”

The two sipped their drinks as Pasha stretched his shoulders back to ease the tightness. “I was thinking during the night, Kalya. My father? Why was he singled out and killed? My uncle went on to a life of sacrifice, helping the needy while my father stayed behind. And, how do you figure in my story?”

Kalya turned to the oarsman steering the boat. “How long until we pick up our passengers?”

Pasha turned. A man holding on to the steering oar was well over six feet, had broad shoulders, and solid muscle. The oarsman shaded his eyes from bright sunlight, squinted, and finally said, “When the sun is at the peak.”

A voice from the front of the barge shouted a warning. Kalya and Pasha raced to the port side and saw a barge pulled upstream by a team of men in harnesses.

“Study how hard they struggle, Pasha. No more than slaves, they are Buriaki, the barge haulers.”

Pasha watched as a bedraggled group of twelve men leaned forward into a harness, step-by-step pulling the barge against the current. “How can they do that?” Are they slaves or forced? Some kind of punishment?”

“Do they have a choice either way, I wonder? If paid, it’s only for a pittance, if that.”

It grew quiet after they floated past the groaning of the barge haulers. Pasha turned to watch the Kalya wiping tears from his eyes. “I want to tell you a story, comrade. Let me go to my bag and get us vodka.”

Kalya gathered his thoughts, then began. “Your father, your uncle, and I became part of a story much larger than any of us. It goes by many names. Marx and Engels probably never did an honest days’ labor. But they could write and speak. Oh, how they could write. They knew what was happening to workers the world over.”

Kalya went to the galley and brought more vodka and some biscuits.

“They wrote about wealthy rulers who said, you work, and I will reap the reward. Until we reach the docks of Perm, we’ll pass by the dachas and castles of the rich. They sit on their lawns and watch the Buriaki, the barge haulers, pulling with those brutal harnesses. They sip lemonade and plan the evening’s entertainment.

Kalya held up his arm, stabbing his fist in the air, shouting rude insults in earthy Russian as they passed one.

“The madness of this war to the west is unimaginable. Thousands are dying in a war fueled by bickering between cousins in Prussia, England, and Russia. Imagine all the incestuous blood flowing through their veins.

The royals and their toadies control the wealth. Ordinary people like you and me, and those unfortunate brothers and sisters pulling boats upstream. They want us to suckle at their teats, hoping some wealth will trickle down and feed us. But those teats have long gone dry, leaving us extracting nothing but air.”

Pasha realized his friend had stopped talking. “I heard Papa talk like that. Is that what he imagined too?”

“The two of us, you and me, can yet do something about it,” Kalya said. “We will meet three comrades at the next dock, and four more at the dock after that. There will be men and women at each dock until we reach Perm.”

“What will we do when we get there?”

“You will begin classes and lectures. We teach as we march. When we can, we will all join hundreds of others on trains to Moscow. Our final destination is Petrograd. Something grand is going to happen before long. You are the future, Comrade Pasha.”

This letter in my pocket? It’s a letter from my uncle to someone called Leon Trotsky. Petrograd? Trotsky?

“We will form party cells as more join us. It’s time to end the reign of Tzar Nicholas. The idea for such a revolution started with Marx, but unrest oozed came long before. Marx wrote, but our leaders are demanding action, even outright violence. There are underground networks of cells like ours all over Russia. We will be ready to answer when the call comes.”

Pasha listened intently.

“That letter you have for Trotsky is important. Your uncle is sending vital information. It’s coming soon, the revolution. Until then, swear to keep it secret.”

“I swear,” Pasha said, feeling his pulse rising.

“The European war has created a vacuum. The Tzar spends money on luxury while the economy is near collapse. Word is going out to us all asking us to gather for the great Bolshevik uprising.”

“Who are the leaders, Kalya. Are you a leader?”

“Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov are the leaders, the men at the top. But Trotsky is the one organizing the rebellion in Petrograd. It will be a grand time for you and me to be there. Will you join me?” Kalya raised his hand in what would come to be known by Pasha as the Bolshevik salute.

He raised his hand, saluting Kalya in return.

“You will help me recruit and train others, comrade Pasha. Now, we need to finish our vodka. He filled two glasses, handing one to Pasha. “Tvoyemu dyade zhene, to your uncle Genya.”

Pasha reached for the bottle, refilling the glasses. “Moy tost za papu, to Papa.”

“Choot-choot, a little more,” Kalya roared. “smert’ tsaryu. Death to the Tzar.”

Pasha wasn’t sure he understood all he heard, but something inside told him it was necessary, as if – for the first time in his life – he had a reason to be.

In the nearly two years since leaving his uncle, Pasha’s life became a routing of recruiting, convincing, and training. He was good at it and was assigned minor leadership roles, surprised that men twice his age would listen and obey. Through all this, he pushed aside memories of home, his father, and his uncle.

Kalya noticed a change in Pasha, worried he was mechanically carrying out his duties without emotion, insensitive to those around him.

“I don’t care what anyone feels,” he told Kalya. “We do what is necessary to achieve our goal. What does feeling have to do with anything?”