Circumstances Only Reveal What Kind of Person One Is
Aleksey Brusilov.
Among the Russian commanders who fought in the First World War, he was virtually the only one ever ranked as a true master of his craft.
He spoke with quiet composure.
"On this fine day I have been forced to witness a truly pathetic spectacle. What is one to do…"
— Thud.
The old general's hand settled on my shoulder.
"Rise, young man. A man does not kneel so easily."
I rose slowly to my feet.
I had never intended to lick Zinoviev's shoe in the first place, but this turn of events was hardly to my disadvantage.
Brusilov withdrew his hand and shifted his gaze back to Zinoviev.
"…Well now. This is something."
Zinoviev, who until a moment ago had been thrusting his foot forward in arrogant demand, quietly drew it back and spoke.
"I had heard you were departing for a rest cure in Karlovy Vary, Comrade Brusilov. What brings you all the way to a humble place like this?"
The edge had gone out of Zinoviev's tone, yet a faint note of condescension still lingered beneath it.
"I can leave whenever I please… but my daughter made a small request of me."
The old general glanced my way and reached a hand behind him.
Katerina's shoulder slipped beneath his palm.
"……"
With Zinoviev and Brusilov at my back, I regarded Katerina with calm detachment.
She returned my gaze with the same impassive face.
Those emerald eyes that had once blazed in every color now rested in some deep abyss, holding no light at all.
…So this is what Katerina looks like on official occasions.
"I am a father who has failed to give her many things. I decided I would grant her at least one wish before I die."
"The general's paternal devotion is the stuff of legend, of course. It is only a pity that such a precious daughter is not your own flesh and blood."
"And why should the Chairman find that a pity?"
"Because a man in your condition fretting over another man's child is a hard sight for those nearby to bear."
"Mind your own business. Whether Kacha is my blood or not, she remains my daughter. That does not change."
Brusilov's voice was low and unyielding.
"I never knew you had so much free time that you could spare it for other men's family affairs."
He took his hand from Katerina's shoulder and continued evenly.
"Put that solicitude of yours to better use looking after SPB."
"It is not SPB—it is Leningrad…!!!"
"Hmph. SPB, Petrograd, Leningrad—what difference does the name make? The people who live inside it never change."
Brusilov snorted and pressed on.
"Or were you already thinking of the next name—'Zinovievgrad,' perhaps?"
The old general's eyes bore down on Zinoviev.
"Even the fairest flower withers before ten days have passed. Does the Chairman truly believe this city will be his forever?"
The smile drained from Zinoviev's face.
In an instant the air between them froze solid.
"……"
For a long moment Zinoviev could not open his mouth.
His thick cheeks and lips twitched as if groping for a retort, yet no suitable words emerged.
The master of rhetoric who that very afternoon had held throngs of people in the palm of his hand with a single gesture had vanished without a trace before the battle-hardened veteran of the old empire.
"…I just remembered there is still one matter left to attend to. Comrade Brusilov. Forgive me for not keeping you longer after you have come all this way."
"Is that so? Then by all means, go."
The instant Brusilov finished speaking, Zinoviev turned on his heel.
In the moment of departure, his profile caught my eye unbidden.
The smiling mask Zinoviev had worn had already been stripped away by Brusilov.
His jaw muscles bulged as though he were grinding his teeth; blue veins stood out at his temples.
His hands—clenched, it seemed, to swallow the humiliation of the evening—showed the white bones of the knuckles through the skin.
"Out of the way!"
Zinoviev shoved people from his path with his shoulders and strode through the crowd, vanishing from the ballroom.
"…An unsightly display."
Brusilov's voice came from behind me.
I turned to face him.
"Not at… all."
Then, seeing his face up close, I briefly lost my words.
The flesh had fallen away until the cheekbones jutted starkly; both cheeks were hollowed into shadow, and only a thin layer of skin hung slack over them.
Where in heaven's name had the force of will that had just driven Zinoviev into retreat come from?
From a distance I had not noticed, but after that brief clash the man already wore the look of someone with one foot in the grave….
"Yakov Svanidze, was it?"
"Yes, Your Excellency."
"…No need for that title. We live in a world where everyone is a comrade now, do we not?"
Brusilov smiled faintly and regarded me with eyes of unfathomable depth.
"Well then… you…"
Whatever he had been about to say, his lips paused.
He shifted his gaze to Pavel standing beside me.
"Comrade Pavel, forgive me, but…"
The old general's tone grew markedly more courteous.
"I should like a word alone with this young man. Would you grant us the room?"
"Ah—yes, yes! Of course, Comrade Brusilov!"
Pavel hastily stepped aside.
"Please speak at your ease. I shall take my leave."
He bowed to Brusilov, murmured that they would meet again, and withdrew.
"…It will be hard to talk quietly in a place like this."
Brusilov swept a glance over the noisy hall and began to walk.
"Come along. There is a quiet room."
He led the way.
Two of us—no, three—left the ballroom behind and entered a corridor of the Smolny Institute.
As we vanished into the passage, the string music held a long fermata and then faded away.
Brusilov paused briefly before one door, then walked on.
I glanced at the place he had stopped.
It was an unremarkable wooden door like any other, yet a red cloth hung before it, and a small nameplate was fixed to the wall.
‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin…?’
Had this once been Lenin's office?
At last Brusilov halted before a small reception room at the end of the corridor.
— Creeeak…
The protest of old hinges greeted us; I turned my head slowly.
The room before us held only a shabby sofa, a table, and a few small bookcases against the wall; motes of dust drifted through the air.
Brusilov entered first and stood lost in thought, running his fingers over a desk on which dust lay a finger thick.
"Father."
Katerina drew a handkerchief from her breast and wiped his fingers clean.
"……"
After a long silence the old general spoke.
"Comrade Svanidze—do you know who I am?"
"…You are His Excellency Brusilov, the last pride of the crumbling Russian Empire and the beacon of the Red Army."
"Excellency…"
Brusilov repeated the word with care.
The dry, cracked corners of his lips curved faintly.
"To speak that word in the very heart of the Bolsheviks. Are you fearless, or simply ignorant?"
The old general asked.
"How could I not know him? But when I think of the debt all Russia owes Your Excellency, to call you merely 'comrade' would be a grave discourtesy."
How could one name a mountain by the same word used for any ordinary hill?
To call Brusilov "comrade" rather than "Excellency" felt no different to me.
"……"
Excellency.
"It has been a long time. Hearing that word again."
Brusilov closed his eyes, savoring it.
I too closed my eyes and quietly recalled the path he had walked.
After the October Revolution, the moment the Bolshevik government took power, Russia was sucked into the flames of civil war.
The White forces of the counter-revolution, allied with a handful of right-wing Mensheviks, rose against the Bolsheviks; in that chaos both sides pleaded, bribed, and even threatened in their efforts to draw the renowned Brusilov to their banner.
Yet Brusilov held to neutrality until the very end—until events forced his hand.
14 February 1919.
The Polish–Bolshevik War erupted.
"This place… is where this Aleksey forced his old comrades of the empire to make their sacrifices."
In the wrinkled corners of the old general's eyes settled the afterimages of decades.
Before Brusilov's gaze it was as though the issue of Pravda he himself had published on 30 May 1920 still hung in the air.
"All Russians…! Enlist in the Red Army for the defense of the Motherland!"
Once civil war broke out and foreign armies invaded Soviet soil, the Bolshevik government transformed itself from a revolutionary regime into the guardian of Russia.
Countless former officers of the Imperial Russian Army joined the Red ranks, and Brusilov was among them.
He sank into a chair.
The old seat groaned weakly under his weight.
"…Kacha."
"Yes, Father."
"The conversation this old man means to have with our young comrade is not one that needs many ears."
"…I shall wait outside."
Katerina answered briefly, closed the door, and took up her post before it.
Only then did Brusilov open his eyes.
The old general indicated the chair opposite with a glance.
"Sit, Yakov Dzhugashvili."
"……!"
At my startled reaction Brusilov raised a hand to soothe me.
"Do not be alarmed. It was this old man himself who asked the General Secretary to take Kacha in."