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Grigori could not dispute that. There was no sign of trouble.
Mother and child went off to walk around the frozen lake. Grigori's breath caught in his throat as he watched Vladimir toddle away and almost immediately fall over. Katerina picked him up, soothed him, and walked on. They looked so vulnerable. What was going to happen to them?
When they returned, Katerina said she was taking Vladimir home for his nap.
"Go by the back streets," Grigori said. "Keep away from crowds. I don't know what might happen. "
"All right," she said.
"Promise. "
"I promise. "
Grigori saw no bloodshed that day, but at the barracks in the evening he heard a different story from other groups. In Znamenskaya Square soldiers had been ordered to shoot demonstrators, and forty people had died. Grigori felt a cold hand on his heart. Katerina might have been killed just walking along the street!
Others were equally outraged, and in the mess hall feelings were running high. Sensing the mood of the men, Grigori stood on a table and took charge, calling for order and inviting soldiers to speak in turn. Supper turned rapidly into a mass meeting. He called first on Isaak, who was well known as the star of the regimental soccer team.
"I joined the army to kill Germans, not Russians," Isaak said, and there was a roar of approval. "The marchers are our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers-and their only crime is to ask for bread!"
Grigori knew all the Bolsheviks in the regiment, and he called on several of them to speak, but he was careful to point to others too, not to seem overly biased. Normally the men were cautious about expressing their opinions, for fear their remarks would be reported and they would be punished; but today they did not seem to care.
The speaker who made the greatest impression was Yakov, a tall man with shoulders like a bear. He stood on the table beside Grigori with tears in his eyes. "When they told us to fire, I didn't know what to do," he said. He seemed unable to raise his voice, and the room went quiet as the other men strained to hear him. "I said: 'God, please guide me now,' and I listened in my heart, but God sent me no answer. " The men were silent. "I raised my rifle," Yakov said. "The captain was screaming: 'Shoot! Shoot!' But who should I shoot at? In Galicia we knew who our enemies were because they were firing at us. But today in the square no one was attacking us. The people were mostly women, some with children. Even the men had no weapons. "
He fell silent. The men were as still as stones, as if they feared that any movement might break the spell. After a moment Isaak prompted him. "What happened next, Yakov Davidovich?"
"I pulled the trigger," Yakov said, and the tears ran from his eyes into his bushy black beard. "I didn't even aim the gun. The captain was screaming at me and I fired just to shut him up. But I hit a woman. A girl, really; about nineteen, I suppose. She had a green coat. I shot her in the chest, and the blood went all over the coat, red on green. Then she fell down. " He was weeping openly now, speaking in gasps. "I dropped my gun and tried to go to her, to help her, but the crowd went for me, punching and kicking, though I hardly felt it. " He wiped his face with his sleeve. "I'm in trouble, now, for losing my rifle. " There was another long pause. "Nineteen," he said. "I think she must have been about nineteen. "
Grigori had not noticed the door opening, but suddenly Lieutenant Kirillov was there. "Get off that damn table, Yakov," he shouted. He looked at Grigori. "You, too, Peshkov, you troublemaker. " He turned and spoke to the men, sitting on benches at their trestle tables. "Return to your barracks, all of you," he said. "Anyone still in this room one minute from now gets a flogging. "
No one moved. The men stared surlily at the lieutenant. Grigori wondered if this was how a mutiny started.
But Yakov was too lost in his misery to realize what a moment of drama he had created; he got down clumsily from the table, and the tension was released. Some of the men close to Kirillov stood up, looking sullen but scared. Grigori remained defiantly standing on the table a few moments longer, but he sensed that the men were not quite angry enough to turn on an officer, so in the end he got down. The men started to leave the room. Kirillov remained where he was, glaring at everyone.
Grigori returned to barracks and soon the bell rang for lights-out. As a sergeant, he had the privilege of a curtained niche at the end of his platoon's dormitory. He could hear the men speaking in low voices.
"I won't shoot women," said one.
"Me neither. "
A third voice said: "If you don't, some of these bastard officers will shoot you for disobedience!"
"I'm going to aim to miss," said another voice.
"They might see. "
"You only have to aim a bit above the heads of the crowd. No one can be sure what you're doing. "
"That's what I'm going to do," said another voice.
"Me, too. "
"Me, too. "
We'll see, Grigori thought as he drifted off to sleep. Brave words came easily in the dark. Daylight might tell a different story.
{III}
On Monday Grigori's platoon was marched the short distance along Samsonievsky Prospekt to the Liteiny Bridge and ordered to prevent demonstrators crossing the river to the city center. The bridge was four hundred yards long, and rested on massive stone piers set into the frozen river like stranded icebreakers.
