The Accidental Anarchist Read Free

horses or 40 men, but with a little effort were able to hold many times that number. Although it was unheated, we could, at least, sit down.
     
    While waiting for the train to depart, we shared another bottle of vodka providentially carried by one of the Polish boys. A Vanya non-commissioned officer with a stripe on his collar came pushing in with a stack of papers and started calling out names. Having, to his visible astonishment, found us all accounted for, he launched into a pompous sermon on how we should conduct ourselves as good, pious subjects of the Czar, meaning we were to jump to obey all of his orders. In the meantime, we would shortly be issued our subsistence pay.
     
    Before Glasnik could wonder aloud if this was the right train and not some cattle express bound for Manchuria, another Vanya walked into our car bearing a sack of coins. I knew that the Czar didn’t pay princely wages, but even I was unprepared to be handed seven groschen for a day’s subsistence, which was not quite enough to buy a pound of bread. Among those who raged against this Russian stinginess were some of the gentile Polish boys who had been raised to believe that Poland was their country, and not a Russian colony.
     
    There was a roar of protest, which the second Vanya tried to appease by pointing out that at each stop we would also get free hot water. The two non-coms seemed on the verge of being overwhelmed by a spontaneous uprising.
     
    For my part, I wanted nothing to delay my getting to Petersburg, and tried to calm down the Poles by pointing out that it was undoubtedly not the non-coms who were robbing us, but the greater thieves at the top who took the money allotted for soldiers’ food, and put it in their own pockets.
     
    I never would have dreamed I’d said anything out of line, but the two non-coms I had saved from a taste of hearty Polish violence, asked me gratefully for my name and let me know they’d have their eye on me now as a revolutionary agitator. Following which, they began to bless us all impartially with good Russian benedictions, ending with the assurance that there was an excellent chance the lot of us would end up sampling the inside of a prison fortress for attempted mutiny.
     
    By this time, being a soldier of the Czar had lost much of its charm. I resolved for the balance of my enlistment to keep my nose out of all brawls, mutinies, riots and revolutions or, in fact, any incidents other than those involving what I grandly thought of as “the honor of the Jewish people.”
     
    After a couple of hours, the train finally left Poland and, in the gloom of a sunless afternoon, began its grudging progress through a desolate landscape of meager fields, occasionally populated by skinny Russian horses and skeletal cows hunting for blades of grass. The Russians may have been a great military power, but they had a lot to learn about farming.
     
    Night fell, and the train sped on without stopping for the promised hot water, while the lot of us scratched our unwashed bodies and groped peevishly for comfortable positions in which to sleep. Finally, due to the suffocating air and the foul smell of our bodies and feet, most of us fell into a state that was not so much sleep as loss of consciousness.
     
    It seemed that I had barely closed an eye when the train screamed and shuddered to a halt. It was shortly after midnight. Military voices roared at us to get off with all of our belongings. We tumbled out, still half-asleep, and were driven like cattle through narrow, dirty streets until we reached a row of barracks where we were permitted to let our gear slide off our backs.
     
    In the mess hall, long tables had been hammered together out of splintery boards. Atop them sat tin bowls filled with lukewarm, dirty water. Floating desperately on top of this brew were a few scraps of roasted pigskin that had probably been too tough to make into boots.
     
    We were each given wooden spoons. And while the others fell