The Turning (12 page)

The woman behind the desk glanced at the petition and said, “The deputy is too busy to see you on such a small matter. I’ll see that the petition is passed along.”

“Please, just let the deputy know who I am. I am sure he is expecting me and has a photographer all ready to take a picture for the Leningrad newspaper. He will be very angry if you send me away.”

The woman gave me a suspicious look. “If he bites off my head for bothering him, it will be your fault.”

She dialed a number and read out my name. With a disappointed look she indicated the bank of elevators. “It seems he will see you,” she said. “Tenth floor.”

When I reached the tenth floor, a tall, thin man with glasses resting on the end of his nose was waiting at the elevator to greet me. He ushered me by some secretaries and pulled me into his office. “I had a phone call from Georgi Mikhailovich telling me that his granddaughter was visiting Moscow and would stop by to request money for something or other. I knew he couldn’t speak freely over the phone and guessed that you would have something of importance for me.”

The man looked so intently at me, I was sure he could see into my backpack. I quickly handed him the letter, which he read at a gulp, nodding and repeating yes, yes as he went along. He must have been encouraged by what he read, for when he was finished, he smiled at me and said, “You were brave to bring this, Tanya.”

“Lev Petrovich,” I said, “I saw a tank on the street just a minute ago.”

“I believe the coup is under way. We guessed it would come while Gorbachev was out of town, but we had no idea it would come so soon.” He let out a sigh, so deep it must have traveled all the way up from his toes. “It may be that you have arrived in Moscow on the very day Russia loses her chance for freedom.”

There were shouts. One of the secretaries called, “Lev Petrovich, come and look!”

We hurried to the window. There, crawling along on the street looking like a parade of giant beetles, were scores of tanks. Just behind them was a long line of trucks loaded with soldiers.

Someone switched on a radio. A man with the voice of an angry schoolmaster announced that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, on vacation in the Crimea, had been replaced because of ill health. Power was being transferred to the vice president and to something called the Committee for a State of Emergency.

Lev Petrovich said, “That committee will be made up of the army and the KGB and the Communist party. They probably have Gorbachev under arrest. Now our only hope is the president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, if he hasn’t been arrested as well.”

We could see hundreds of people pouring out of houses and buildings. They were gathering around the parliament building, shouting and shaking their fists at the tanks. The soldiers’ guns at the ready kept the people from getting too close.

A moment later there was a great roar and the sound of breaking glass. The tanks were firing on the parliament! We dropped to the floor. After a moment everything was silent. When no more shots were fired, we slowly got up, everyone looking embarrassed at having been frightened. We brushed ourselves off and went back to the windows to see what our fate would be.

“If we are ever to have democracy in this country,” Lev Petrovich said, “it must come from this building and on this day.” For a moment he forgot the drama outside the building and turned to me. “I am sure you had no idea you would find yourself in the middle of a battle, but I have no doubt that any grandchild of Georgi Mikhailovich will know how to be brave.”

There was a shout from the hallway. “Yeltsin is here!” We crowded into the hallway, and there hurtling toward us, two stairs at a time, was a giant of a man, his hair uncombed, his shirt half out, and wearing under his jacket a heavy military-looking vest that I guessed at once must be bulletproof. “They lied to the soldiers,” he cried, “telling them they were being sent into Moscow to round up draft dodgers. Even so, some of the soldiers may go along with the coup, but there will be soldiers who will come over to our side. I am sure of it.”

Someone called, “The television and radio stations have been taken over.”

“We will have to find another way to get the truth out,” Yeltsin said. “We have to tell them that Gorbachev is under arrest in his dacha in the Crimea, but that the president of Russia, me, Boris Yeltsin, is right here on duty in the parliament. I and all the deputies will fight to the death to preserve Russia’s new freedom. Everyone in the city must come out and support us.

“Lev Petrovich, get your people together and print a leaflet—print thousands of them.” Yeltsin began to dictate the words for the leaflet:

Storm clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country. The enemy must not be allowed to bring eternal night. Citizens of Russia, I believe in this tragic hour you can make the right choice. The honor and glory of Russian men of arms shall not be stained with the blood of the people
.

Before I knew it, I was gathering the leaflets as they came from the printing machine. I ran down the stairway to the entrance, where people were grabbing the leaflets to post all over the city. When soldiers stopped us, we carried the leaflets to all the offices and flung them out the windows to the people who waited below.

The streets were a solid sea of people, thousands and thousands of people. Some were approaching the tanks and arguing with the soldiers. Some were putting flowers in the gun barrels. Yeltsin wanted to talk with the people, but even though he had his bulletproof vest, everyone was afraid of snipers. “They would like nothing better than a chance to shoot you down, Boris Nikolayevich,” Lev Petrovich warned Yeltsin.

Down below us a microphone had been hastily put up. One after another, speakers stood up and addressed the crowd, urging them to oppose the coup. Surprisingly, the soldiers and the tanks did nothing to stop them.

“Look!” someone cried. “There is Rostropovich!” The most famous cellist in the world, a man who had been exiled from the Soviet Union but who had come back from America for a visit, was standing there waving a Kalashnikov rifle. “I love you,” he shouted to the crowd. “I am proud of you.” The soldiers didn’t dare shoot at the man who was famous all over the world.

After seeing Mikhail Rostropovich, nothing could hold Yeltsin back. Yeltsin said, “I’m going out there.” He combed his unruly hair, put his necktie back on, and strode out the front door. We hung out of the windows, holding our breath. He was a large and easy target. One bullet and there would be no one to rally around, no one to lead the country into real freedom. The soldiers were standing up in their tanks watching Yeltsin approach. The crowd was shouting and cheering. I stopped breathing.

Yeltsin paused in front of a tank. Suddenly he was climbing up the side of the tank, his big awkward body supported and pushed by a churning crowd. The soldier in the tank not only did not stop him, but amazingly even gave him a hand up. Yeltsin was astride the tank and waving to the crowd. People swarmed around the tank. “Citizens of Russia,” he shouted above the roar. He urged the soldiers not to take part in the coup, and he appealed to the whole country to support democracy. From everywhere came the shout of “Yeltsin, Yeltsin.” He climbed down and came inside, his hair tousled, sweat running down his face.

As we watched from the window, we were amazed to see that some of the gunners on the tanks were turning the barrels of their guns away from the parliament building. A great cheer went up, and we all hugged one another.

We printed leaflets all afternoon without stopping. It was only when someone mentioned that we had not had anything to eat that I realized I was starving. A deputy named Nemtsov had an idea. “The American embassy is close by. I’ll give them a call and tell them we have no food. Surely they will understand that we are fighting for democracy in here.”

Within an hour a van drove up with the name of the United States on it. There was some discussion between the soldiers and the driver, but at last the driver and his helper got permission to bring the food into the parliament. We sat around, the men in shirtsleeves, the women with their shoes kicked off, gobbling down sandwiches and watching the television. All the news had been cut off. Incredibly, Moscow TV was showing a movie of the Bolshoi Ballet dancing
Swan Lake
. For a moment I forgot where I was and sat there intent on the performance of the prima ballerina. The others were all talking about the coup in worried tones. Finally Lev Petrovich asked, “Tanya, at what are you staring?”

Without thinking, I said, “At her
brisé volé en avant
. The way she slides her foot after the
demi-plié
is very awkward.”

There was complete silence, and then everyone began to laugh. “Well, as long as there is nothing more to worry about than a
demi-plié
,” Lev Petrovich said, “there is hope for Russia’s future.”

As night came on, thousands stayed to cheer Yeltsin and to demand that the tanks leave, but the tanks remained. Reporters from all over had crowded into the building and were sending out reports of the coup around the world. The fax machines rattled away and the phones kept ringing. We heard a loud cheer go up from the crowd as they learned there was a huge rally against the coup in Leningrad’s Palace Square. I was sure Grandfather would be leading it.

Moments later the joy turned to shock. Three men had been killed. One of the men had thrown a canvas over the window of a tank to blind the driver so the tank could not move. Once the tank stopped, the man jumped up trying to get inside. He was shot by a soldier and died instantly. When his two friends tried to pull his body away from the advancing tank, they were shot. After that Lev Petrovich and several other deputies patrolled the hallways with rifles at the ready. They were obviously unused to guns, and their awkwardness with them made us feel more uneasy than safe. Even the great Rostropovich was guarding Yeltsin’s office with his Kalashnikov rifle.

Outside, the tanks were quiet and the crowd settled in for the night. The continual sound of their portable radios was like waves of a sea washing in. It was nearly light when I finally put my head down on a desk and closed my eyes, thinking what a story I would have to tell Grandfather, forgetting that when the coup was over, however it turned out, I would be far away in Paris.

In the morning I headed for the bathroom with the other women to splash water on my face. We shared combs and lipsticks, trying to put ourselves in some kind of order. The men slicked down their hair with water, but they all had a day’s growth of beard. In spite of a rain that had begun to fall, the crowd had spent the night in the streets. “There must be a hundred thousand people out there,” Lev Petrovich said.

All night famous people had come to entertain the crowd and encourage opposition to the coup. The comic Gennady Khazanov gave a funny imitation of Gorbachev. The poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko, who was a friend of my grandmother’s, read a poem to the crowd. I remembered how he had once written that we all needed to be tormented by our consciences. As long as we hear within ourselves the cry, “What have
I
done,” he wrote, “then something can be done with this world.” On this day tormented consciences were winning, but what of mine? What would my conscience say to me for running away from Russia?

Yeltsin walked out onto a balcony. When he appeared, a tremendous shout went up. Lev Petrovich pushed his way onto the balcony with the other deputies, pulling me with him. “There will be cameras out there, Tanya. Now is your chance to be famous. These pictures will be in newspapers all around the world. Think how proud your grandfather will be to see you here.”

“Democracy will win out,” Yeltsin shouted. He promised to stay in the parliament building for as long as it took for the leaders of the coup to be brought to justice. A wild cheer went up.

By noon of the second day we were all hungry again. The food from the American embassy had long since been eaten. As we looked out the window, we saw a man make a dash for the parliament building. He was carrying a load of boxes. Behind him came another man also with a tower of boxes. Pizzas! More pizzas came, and we sat around the desks drinking soda from the machines and eating the pizzas, tomato and cheese all over our faces.

Just as we finished our feast, startling news swept the parliament: In front of the KGB building the people had pulled down the statue of the founder of the secret police. Someone called to say Gorbachev had been released and the leaders of the coup had ordered the troops out of the city. The great armored beasts began to move away from the parliament. A rumor spread that Gorbachev was furious over his arrest by the KGB and would issue a decree to put an end to the Communist party.

I had lost all track of time, but now I realized that unless I left at once, I would miss the flight to Paris. Lev Petrovich shook my hand. “They will be cheering in St. Petersburg, and your grandfather will be leading them,” he said to me. For a moment I didn’t take in his words. Then for the first time I realized what had happened. “St. Petersburg,” he had said. Because of the coup’s defeat, my city had its rightful name back. Leningrad was once more St. Petersburg. I said the city’s real name over and over. Leningrad was gone forever. I had watched it happen. I had been a part of it. I could see that change was possible, and my heart filled with hope. How could I leave Russia?

CHAPTER 11

PARIS

I was just in time to hug Natalia, promise to write to her, and board the bus to the airport. On the bus I had to tell my story over and over. Even Madame and Maxim Nikolayevich hung upon my words, but at the end of my story Madame said, “I hope you did not forget your practice sessions while you were in the parliament building. Did you have your toe shoes with you?”

I had to confess that I did not.

We all tried to pretend that soaring thousands of feet into the air and flying along at hundreds of miles an hour was nothing to us. Vera and I held hands at the takeoff and landing, and I was glad Sasha’s St. Vladimir was traveling with us. I wondered how the promise of a new Russia could change things for Sasha and me. I only knew I couldn’t wait to see Sasha and tell him my story. Staying in Paris seemed less exciting than returning to the new Russia, but how was I to tell that to Vera?