Chapter Three
Hollow is the Home
October 1914
Klilisk, Western Siberia
Russian Empire
The manor was quiet, as had become typical these past few nights. It was darkly lit, illuminated only by candles and a handful of electric bulbs, a rarity in the Russian village of Klilisk, a great distance from the Urals. Entire countries could fit in Siberia and be lost in its vast sea of grasslands. A man could walk for days and not see a sign of civilization.
Fyodor walked through the front annex, one side dominated by large windows that showed a black landscape with only the occasional flicker of torches or firepits in the distance showing the homes of local farmhands. The other side held murals of family patriarchs who had come and gone, looking out over land their family had ruled for two centuries. They murals faced the windows, as if gazing over their demesne.
The murals, expensive and time consuming, were always commissioned after death and presented here to show the deceased in their youthful prime. The most recent addition showed a man who was the age presented and who had never truly been more than an heir. It being there showed longing favoritism of the man standing there in uniform, even after death. The frame was gilded gold, the canvas covered in the best paints money could buy from Petropavlovsk, the nearest major city. It was a waste of money, the family fortune being swindled by an increasingly tyrannical and decrepit head of household.
He passed by servants who bowed their heads in respect rather than fear. They did not flinch every time he raised a hand or turned his head sharply. He was not his father after all.
At the end of the annex waited a thick oak set of double doors with silver handles. The butler, Yuri, bowed as he went to open them for Fyodor, announcing him to his parents.
“Wait,” he said, looking into a nearby mirror, seeing a disheveled youth of twenty-two with brown hair that seemed as wild as his spirit. His eyes were his most notable feature, one brown and the other gray.
“You may now present me.”
Yuri nodded and pushed open the doors as if at a ball.
“My lord and lady, the noble Fyodor Stefannovich Petrovnik.”
He walked in and was met with silence. His father’s pale eyes were akin to chipped ice as they stared at him while his mother’s soft dark eyes darted back and forth from father to son. The long table was fitted with the finest linen cloths, napkins and old enameled plated that were new in Fyodor’s grandfather’s time. Food had been set out earlier and it was obvious his parents had waited for his arrival to begin the meal.
Fyodor sat at the opposite end of the table, facing his father, rather than sitting from across his mother as he had done for his entire life. His mother grunted in dismay while his father clicked his tongue in annoyance.
“Have you no respect, boy?” demanded Stefann Peterovich Petrovnik.
“Respect for whom, father?”
The older baron reddened and slammed his fist. “You know damn well who, you little shit,” The baron’s eyes flicked to a nearby shelf where an opened letter from the War Ministry had resided for over two weeks, half-crumpled from fury and stained with tears.
Fyodor looked at his father, a slim feeling of guilt coming and going, but he met that steely gaze with one of his own.
“He’s dead, father, and he won’t come back. It is time we moved on.”
Baron Petrovnik stood up suddenly, slamming his fists down on the table, causing the glasses of champagne to shake, one nearly toppling before a servant rushed forward to stabilize it.
“Get out of this room! Get out of this house! Get out. GET OUT! Go to town and sleep with the whores, you won’t be welcome to a bed in my family’s manor this night.”
Though cold and shaking internally with fear, Fyodor slowly picked up a silver spoon and sipped the bowl of soup’s contents that had been laid before him. Grimacing theatrically, he laid it down carefully and rose from his cushioned seat.
“The food is cold anyway.” He turned towards his mother. “Pardon me. Goodnight, mother.”
The baroness’ eyes were wet from tears but she mouthed goodnight as his father continued another tirade that had become all too common since news of his eldest son’s death in an Austro-Hungarian prisoner-of-war camp reached them, ostensibly due to disease though Baron Petrovnik and Fyodor both suspected torture had caused Mikhail the heir’s demise. They had deigned to not share this belief with the baroness, lest her fragile health was affected by the realization.
Fyodor knew his father’s words to leave the house were an order he dared not risk rebelling against, promptly arriving at his room and gathering a change of clothes for the night while exchanging what he currently wore to a simple white shirt with rolled up sleeves and black trousers. With a satchel of clothes and toiletries plus a pocket full of rubles, Fyodor left Petrovnik Manor. The two stablemen who doubled as guards, both carrying aging rifles over their shoulders as they waved the young lord away.
Passing beneath the iron archway, Fyodor walked in the general direction towards Klilisk, though he angled to walk far from the manor and its grounds so he did not approach the town directly from his home. The town of Klilisk held perhaps a thousand people, many of whom were laborers who worked in the nearby copper mines, and the rest made up principally of those who washed, housed, and supplied the miners. Another thousand or so farmers lived in the surrounding countryside, growing a variety of foodstuffs for the town and its residents.
All of it was subservient to the Petrovnik family and had been for close to two hundred years. It deeply ashamed him that his family had grown wealthy on the backs of near penniless workers and peasants. He had grown up in wealth, though admittedly not as vast as his ancestors, it was still opulent compared to the masses of Klilisk and its neighboring farms.
In time, he would repent for that sin. One day. Just outside of town, he rummaged in his satchel for the false beard, using gluey gop to stick it to his face. He knelt onto the ground and grabbed handfuls of dirt, rubbing it into the clothing and his face, his sweat acting as a good retainer of the dirt.
Once thoroughly dirtied, he made off into the town, passing the outlying homes and warehouses.
Walking through the main street, dust kicking up as he walked over the dirt, he approached
Schastlivchik (The Lucky One), a mix of a motel, bar and brothel.
He was a frequent attendee.
Walking in, he was greeted by the customers inside, from the large bartender who went by the name of Bull, the dirt and sweat laden miners drinking away the exhaustion of another long thankless day in the mines, and the topless barmaids who passed out lukewarm beer in dented cups and shots of vodka in dirty, chipped glasses. Trays of food were handed out as well, alleviating the smell of unwashed bodies and burned tobacco.
“Ah, Andrei!” spoke a dark haired Kazakh barmaid, Amina, her breasts heavy and glistening with sweat despite the sun having set hours ago, and attracting the gaze of every man with a pulse. “It has been some time. What brings you to Klilisk?”
“Why the piss-poor beer of course!” several seated customers nearby chuckled aloud, Bull smirking as he wiped his ever-dirty counter. Fyodor walked over to the bar and leaned forward.
“Is there a card game tonight?”
Bull eyed him and gave a small nod to the back of the brothel where a strongman watched everyone. Fyodor was allowed through after a quick pat and bribe. It was their customary exchange.
At the back of
Schastlivchik was a room filled with smoke from cheap cigarettes and pipes. A half-dozen men and two women were playing cards, seemingly tense until they saw who it was.
“Andrei!” bellowed the dealer, Turrol. “Sit, my friend! Play a hand.”
Fyodor did so, and for hours they played cards, talking of the war, both official, unofficial and rumor, and the military and police crackdown of agitators in cities throughout the empire.
Okhrana agents were said to be everywhere.
As the noise, both singing and the thud of miners escorting barmaids upstairs for a session of paid for sex, lessened the card players turned serious once more. The Bull and Amina came in, as did three others, while the strongman, whose name Fyodor never knew for it was never given, handed out shots of vodka.
The bull went to a false wall behind Turrol and pulled out three battered copies of books and passed them around. Fyodor, as the most educated of the people here though few knew it, received one. He looked at its battered cover.
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
The sacred tome of revolutionary thought that was growing across the Motherland.
The Bull raised his shot glass, the others following.
“To the Revolution, comrades.”
“To the Revolution,” they whispered fervently, not daring another to hear of their illegal gathering, and all downed the shot with ease, the vodka burning their throats to explode in their stomach. It was cheap but effective. Exhales of pleasure, and perhaps pain, echoed around the room.
“Let us begin with a quote from Comrade Marx,” Bull said, opening his copy of the Manifesto but not even looking down at it for he had memorized it long ago. Clearing his throat, he began, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”
And so they would, Fyodor thought, revolutionary fervor surging through him. And so they would.