Ice Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page B

voice, whom the pupils dubbed Nebuchadnezzar, put me into a state of enraptured fear.
    Not three months of my school life had passed when another Revolution struck. Father called it the “Bolshevik distemper” and promised that “this scum won’t last long.”
    He was sorely mistaken.
    Everything was different during the second Revolution: only soldiers in overcoats and sailors ran downs the streets, rode on horses, and passed by in trucks. And they all had rifles. Citizens moved about cautiously, trying to keep closer to home. At night you could hear shots.
    Then time seemed to
condense
. It flew so fast that everything whisked by and got confused: people, events, seasons.
    Despite the “Bolshevik distemper,” classes continued in the lycée until the spring of 1918. And they stopped for a very simple reason: a large portion of the pupils and their wealthy parents fled Petersburg. And Russia.
    Our family was ripe for flight in July. Things had changed. Ilya, who had taken a fancy to Marxism while still in school, became a Red and went over to the Bolsheviks. He broke ties with Father. He sent Mama a couple of letters through someone, in which he wrote that he was fighting for a free Russia. Then Ilya disappeared forever. Vasilisa quickly married a silent, hook-nosed lieutenant who had been demobilized because of a wound (in his left knee), and just as swiftly left with him for his mother’s home in the Crimea.
    Father, who had lost everything in Russia, intended to take us to Warsaw at first. There he had “a little something,” I never did understand what — a house or a business. Then he planned to go farther — to Zürich, where he had “something.” The banker Riabov, who had acquired a house there before both revolutions, made his way to Zürich with his family. In the summer of 1918 the road to Europe lay through Kiev. Dymbinsky, a man with a small mustache, took it upon himself to see Mama and my sisters to Warsaw first, and then Father, Vanya, and me. Father needed another couple of weeks in order to “sort out some business in Peter.” Those two weeks turned out to be fateful for the family. Mama, Nastya, and Arisha had barely left when my brother Vanya came down with typhoid fever. He lay in bed for a month, but fortunately recovered, although he had grown very thin and yellow. Then Father was taken by the Cheka. For three months there was no news of him. Our pious aunt Flora, Mother’s sister, who took Ivan and me to live at her house on the Moika Canal, prayed every day for our arrested father. And a miracle happened — they let him out. He returned from the Cheka slumped and gray-haired. But he said that in three months in prison no one had once hit him in the face.
    As a result, it was winter before we made it to Kiev. We settled in Lipki, a wealthy, well-tended neighborhood, in the large apartment of Papa’s brother. The absolute opposite of Father, Uncle Yury, an enthusiastic, whimsical, loud man who had no intention of leaving his native Kiev, received us as though there had been no Revolution or war at all. At home, his table was always groaning with greasy Ukrainian food, a neatly dressed servant served champagne, and Uncle, a bit grayer and thinner, was always talking boisterously and drinking the health of some Hetman I knew nothing about. After stern Petersburg with its bread lines, Uncle’s abundant table seemed incredible. But the most incredible thing turned out to be that Mama and my sisters, who had stayed with Uncle Yury, had set off for Warsaw at the beginning of November, and no one knew whether they had arrived or not. However, everyone knew that there was a revolution in Warsaw as well, and that Pilsudski had declared independence. Father was in a frenzy: he screamed at Uncle, calling him a milksop of a bumpkin, and stomped his feet. Uncle Yury tried to calm him as well as he could. He swore up and down that Mama and my sisters were alive and safe.
    Uncle Yury was our