Blood Red, Snow White (6 page)

Shots were fired into the air, for joy, and with each shot the people shouted and cheered. They ran riot through the streets, smashing statues of the Tsar, burning his paintings and pulling the all-seeing double-headed eagles from the tops of the gates and doorways. Anything too big to destroy was draped in vast swathes of red cloth. They poured in and out of the buildings once forbidden to them, giddy with their new freedom.

The Tsar, the Tsarina, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei were all placed under house arrest at their palace and, as they got used to their captivity, they bizarrely enjoyed some of the happiest times of their lives. The Tsar found himself relieved not to have to make decisions anymore, and the Tsarina was happy to see her husband more his normal self. The children played through the summer, as they always had, and even young Alexei seemed heartier than usual. It was like one long weekend party that lasted all summer. The children had their toys, their pets, their books. The difference was that there were guards at every corner, guards who were dressed not in uniform, but in street clothes. The only things that showed they were guards at all were the rifle on their shoulder and a red rag tied as an armband. And they were not unkind, being somehow still in awe of their once so mighty prisoners.

So the Romanovs were happy. For a brief time.

*   *   *

But what of this final story? Well, it’s a story about love, and like the others, it flows out to the sea, too, to become part of one great tale.

Arthur, the young writer, was tired. He’d been writing about the war—the Tsar’s war against the Kaiser—as best as he could, though sometimes he wondered whether anyone was listening. Then he wrote about the new war, the one between the Tsar, and Lev and Vladimir’s bear, and still he wondered if anyone was listening. He suffered like everyone else. He was cold and hungry, and then one day he got ill, from something in the water.

He got very, very ill, and nearly died.

When he got well again, he made a decision. He realized how very easy it is to die, and that there were people he needed to see back home before he did anything so drastic.

There was his mother, waiting patiently at home in the Lakes for news of her sons, one fighting in the war, the other writing about it, each in as much danger as the other. He wanted to see her again.

There was Tabitha, his daughter, who would have grown up so much since he had last seen her.

And there was Ivy. He wondered if he’d been wrong about Ivy. They had loved each other once, it was true. Perhaps he’d been too hasty in leaving her. Perhaps there might be something for them after all.

So he caught a train, and a boat and another train, and then he visited all the people he wanted to see.

He visited his mother, and he found that he loved her as much as he always did.

He got on another train and went to see Ivy and Tabitha.

He found that he loved Tabitha even more than he always had. To his great delight, he found that she still loved him, too. They went for walks together and sang some silly songs and danced down the lane, laughing in the autumn sunshine.

Things in fairy tales come in threes, that was something else that Arthur had learned as a reader and a writer. Two things go this way, the third goes that. Two things are good, the third is bad.

So maybe he wasn’t surprised to find that when he went to see if he still loved Ivy, he found that he did not.

For three days, they fought and wrestled, and he knew it was time to leave again, though he knew that if he left Ivy, he would perhaps lose Tabitha, too.

But it had to be.

He kissed Tabitha’s sleeping head once more, crept from the house, and with a broken heart he caught a train early one morning.

A few days later he caught another train, and then a boat, and then yet another train, and he came back to that great city where history was churning out more stories than could ever be written down.

*   *   *

It was Christmas Day.

A lot had happened since he’d left.

The people, who now called themselves Reds, had decided that they enjoyed what had happened in February so much, that in October they did it all again.

Things had not moved on as much as they had hoped and desired, and some people were even suggesting that the Tsar should be returned to power. In response, the last trace of the Tsar’s government was swept away, and anyone who disagreed was swept aside with it.

Arthur realized he had missed the biggest story of his life and that he had to do something about it. He spent the next couple of days chasing round the city, looking for stories to write down and send back home.

It seemed to him that the vital thing was to talk to the people in charge, and he soon learned that their names were Lev and Vladimir.

He couldn’t find Vladimir at all. But a day or so before the year ended, he found Lev in a huge old building that had been a school for rich girls until the coming of the bear had frightened them all away. The school was so big that Lev and his friends decided that the best way to get round it was by bicycle.

Arthur wandered through cavernous corridors, open mouthed. It was an unusual sight; the building was magnificent, or rather it had been, but its new inhabitants seemed not to care for the richness of the place. It was a mess. Litter lay everywhere. Cigarette ends had been trodden into the carpets, paintings lay slashed on the floor.

Oh, thought Arthur, so the mighty have fallen!

Finally, at the end of a long corridor on the first floor, he found the door he had been looking for.

It was number 67, and on a piece of paper stuck to the door with a drawing pin was Lev’s name.

Arthur knocked, but there was no reply. He knocked louder, but still there was no reply. The third time, he thumped the door so hard the paper trembled, and the door swung open.

There was a room full of people, all busy, all talking. No one had heard him knocking, and no one seemed to take any notice of him, so he tugged someone’s sleeve.

“Lev?” he asked.

The man shook his head, and pointed at a farther door.

“In there,” he said. “He’s expecting you.”

Arthur made his way across the room, round piles of papers and piles of rubbish, and put his hand on the brass doorknob. As he did so, he saw that he was being watched by a woman, and had to turn away, because she was too beautiful to look at.

He opened the door and let himself in, and there was Lev, deep in conversation on the telephone. He motioned for Arthur to come in.

He finished his phone call, though he took his time, but then Arthur and he talked, and Arthur made notes in his head for the story he would write later.

Arthur was very impressed with Lev, and saw that he was a clever man, which he could tell from the way he stroked his small and excellent beard when he was thinking.

Arthur left, and on his way through the outer room, was disappointed and relieved to see that the beautiful woman had gone, but as he made his way down the stairs, he saw her on the landing. He felt his eyes pull to hers, then look away, but not before he had seen her smile, ever so slightly.

*   *   *

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.