The waiter handed us menus, large and tied with a golden cord and tassel. Mother turned pages. “Mitya hopes the unrest will pressure the emperor to agree to parliamentary concessions.”
Good for her. She hadn’t forgotten us entirely. Great-Aunt Mariya snorted. “Dmitry Ivanovich won’t be satisfied until the Union Jack flies over the Winter Palace.” She set her dog on the chair between herself and Mother and opened her menu. “Thank God it’s still Russia—or at least it was the last time I heard. It is Russia, isn’t it, Masha?”
“One might wonder,” Masha said, scowling at a fat businessman who was laughing too loudly behind her.
“The emperor’s father would know what to do with those demonstrators,” said my great-aunt. “They’d be on their way to Siberia by now.”
Why was I here, dressed up in navy silk like a fool to flatter the vanity of this old party? Just because she was a rich relation without children? It was intolerable. Only the day before, I’d helped lead a walkout at school. How exciting it had been to speak out for freedom, for the eight-hour day and the end of labor militarization, instead of suffering through geometry and Milton. The teachers either sympathized with us or retreated in the face of our agitation, and in afternoon history class, Varvara led a vote to strike. It passed unanimously. Even Mina, when she saw that it was inevitable, voted yes. News spread like a fire from classroom to classroom that the senior girls were walking out. The junior girls voted to join us, even the lower school. It was hardly a tools-down strike at Putilov, but we felt part of the great upheaval.
And now, I had to listen to what the emperor’s father would do to the strikers. My freckles felt like they would burst into flame.
“Would you like some tea?” Mother asked her aunt. “Or wine? Mitya and Seryozha should be along soon, but we should go ahead and order.” She summoned the long-faced waiter with a nod.
“Tea. Ceylon.” My great-aunt petted the snuffling Potemkin. “And some milk in a dish.”
“And a little Madeira,” Masha added, smoothing her curled collar. “I think I’ve earned it, don’t you?” I imagined she must secretly dream of Spain. A scarf tied gypsy style over her forehead, guitars in a star-filled night. I imagined her drunk and humming the “Malagueña” in their big dark apartment in the Arbat.
“Really, we’re grateful the police have kept their heads so far,” Mother said. “The Kadets are cautiously confident that the emperor will come around, as long as no violence occurs.” She stroked her napkin as if it were a nervous cat. “If he doesn’t feel it’s a defeat.”
“The Kadets should come to my hotel room,” said Masha. “They could listen to the speeches without waiting for the newspaper.”
“They’re calling for abdication.” Mariya Grigorievna’s jowls trembled. “Fifty yards from the Winter Palace. It’s treason.”
Abdication? That hadn’t been among the demands of the International Women’s Day march. My God, how far things had come since Thursday. I writhed with impatience to finish this visit and find out what was going on in the street. The collar of my dress rubbed against my skin, making it itch.
Where were Father and Seryozha? They had decided to walk, but it was taking longer than it should. Or rather Father had wanted to walk and invited Seryozha along. The truth was, he didn’t want to spend too much time with the two Mariyas. “Too nice a day to ride,” he’d said. Seryozha had been pleased but wary, like a boy befriended by a bear.
They didn’t appear until we were finishing the soup, Seryozha trailing behind Father with a head-down sulky look. They must have quarreled. My brother let himself be kissed and dropped into the empty chair between me and Cousin Masha, his mood dense and volatile, like the atmosphere on a hot, cloudy planet. Father greeted the old ladies with false heartiness, taking the chair between Mother and Mariya Grigorievna after my aunt removed Potemkin. Though Father despised the bug-eyed dog, he disliked Cousin Masha even more. “You’re both looking well. Quite hale and hearty. Sorry we’re late. Ran into a bit of trouble on the way.”
Mother glanced over at her gloomy son with alarm. “The strikers? You should have come with us.”
“Just some hooligans. It was nothing.” Father glared at my brother, who pretended to study the menu. His lips trembled, I could tell he was trying not to cry. “If it had been Marina, there would have been a bloody nose or two now.”
Now I noticed the dust on Seryozha’s school jacket, the torn sleeve. He’d gotten into a fight—how could that have happened with Father right there? Were they boys he knew? Or just street boys attracted to his long poet’s locks and vulnerable, dreamy face? He must have been dawdling, looking in a shop window. Father would have had to go break it up—how furious he would have been at having to rescue his son from little toughs. Nobody’s going to fight your battles for you, son…yes, I could see the clench of his jaw under his red-brown beard.
“Was he in a brawl?” asked Mariya Grigorievna, pressing her hand to her throat, as if Seryozha were a dangerous thug instead of an artistic fifteen-year-old.
“Hardly,” Father said drily. “But he attracts it. Walking around like that. He might as well have a sign around his neck.”
Mother glanced across me, sympathetic but helpless. “But you’re all right?”
My brother wouldn’t look at her. His nose was red. He stared down at his menu. “Just fantastic,” he replied.
Mother wiped her mouth, sipped her Riesling, and nervously rearranged her silverware. Father ordered a glass of vodka and veal cutlets and took up his charming self like an actor stepping into a familiar role. He asked the old ladies whether they had anything special planned for their stay and how things were in Moscow. Meanwhile, Seryozha took out his notebook and began to caricature them—Masha with her cunning face, sipping her wine, her hat like a dripping egg. Father with his pipe. Jowly Mariya Grigorievna and her jowly dog—as they talked about the wisdom of sending money out of the country.
Father allowed himself the passion of his disapproval. “You can’t be serious. It’s unpatriotic. In the middle of a war.”
“I’m as patriotic as you are,” my great-aunt said, stiffening. She, who had wanted the strikers sent to Siberia. In Seryozha’s drawing, her hat looked ready to fly away with her. “But one must also be practical.” My brother wrote that as a caption below, One must be practical.
We were all relieved when the main course arrived. As I thought of the strikers, the sturgeon stuck in my throat—too fatty, too sweet, and the quartet sounded treacly, like putting lip rouge on Bach. The diners tucking into their meals seemed repellent, callous and greedy. Now Cousin Masha launched into a critique of modern child rearing, which started as an excoriation of my brother but ended as a rant about Mother and Uncle Vadim and how spoiled they’d been. Her spite hung in the air like oily smoke. “My parents said nothing good would come of it. That it would come back to haunt you in the end.”
“Les enfants terribles,” agreed Mariya Grigorievna, but in a tone of indulgence, even approval. “With all your little tricks. You used to absolutely plague that nanny—do you still have her?”
“Avdokia? Oh yes, she’s very much with us.” Mother was happy to turn to more pleasant family memories. “Still the same. Inventing ever more elaborate curses for the insufficiently devout.”
“Your father just gave you everything you wanted.” Masha wouldn’t let it go. She was on to her second Madeira, and little patches of red bloomed on each bony cheek. “Praised you for putting the right shoe on the right foot, as if you’d done something miraculous.”
“My father was a kind man,” Mother said, quietly but firmly. I remembered Dyedushka’s huge eyebrows and muttonchop whiskers, his French walking stick. The way he teased you. The candy in the little drawer in his desk.
“And look where it got you,” said Cousin Masha with an extra jab of malice.
Mother blotted her mouth with a snowy napkin. “And where is that, Masha, dear?”
The old cousin shrugge
d as if it were obvious, cutting her chicken eyes at Father. His prestige in Petrograd—his articles, his law practice, his teaching at the university, membership in the Duma—meant nothing to her. Father didn’t come from dvoryanstvo. He worked for a living, so family legend had it that Mother married beneath her. Impoverished Masha, who’d sponged off Mariya Grigorievna for years, took great solace in that prejudice. She was an incurious woman, uninterested in the world, in other people, new ideas, progress, or change. Only the workings of her own social class and her tenuous foothold in it drew her. She feared that Mariya Grigorievna would leave her fortune to Mother instead of Masha, her deserving companion.
Father clamped his pipe between his teeth and made a show of patting himself down for a means of lighting it. “Excuse me, ladies, I must find some matches.” Leaving us alone with the two Mariyas.
“Gone to the bar, most likely.” Mariya Grigorievna fed a shred of rabbit in sour cream to Potemkin off her fork. I could hardly watch it, but Seryozha’s pencil flew, making skritching noises on the paper. I wished I could follow Father’s lead and abandon ship, but I felt sorry for Seryozha, didn’t want to leave him alone with the Moscow harpies.
Now that Father was gone, their attention turned to me. My great-aunt asked about my plans for the future. Mother spoke up. “Marina will be entering Petrograd University in the fall,” she said with some pride. “She’s been admitted to the department of philology.”
So there.
The old lady tucked her chin, making many of one. “You should save the money. A girl hardly needs that kind of education. It will only give her ideas.”
I couldn’t keep still one more minute. “I believe that’s the point,” I said.
Seryozha snickered. Encouraged, I continued. “In your day, it was enough to look pretty and know what fork to use. Today we want to do things, not just sit there like painted dolls.”
Potemkin’s eyes regarded me with horror, just like his owner’s. “In my day, a young lady at least knew how to comport herself and not go running around contradicting her elders.”
I felt Mother’s hand on my arm, stilling me, but I had the bit in my teeth. “A month from now, you won’t recognize this country. Our lives are about to change forever, while you’re talking about comportment and feeding rabbit to your dog.”
She picked up another piece of meat and held it to the small beast’s mouth. “A whole month? I don’t recognize it now. And if I feed him rabbit, why shouldn’t I? It’s my money, my dog.”
“You see, Vera? You see?” Cousin Masha finished her second glass of Madeira. “Mother was right—sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.”
Mother rubbed her temples. “Masha, dear, your mother was a horse’s ass. That’s what my mother used to say.”
Great-Aunt Mariya Grigorievna laughed out loud. “So true. Forgive me but she really was.”
Masha’s face turned dark with fury. I was glad not to be seated next to her. She would have pinched me. “Waiter!” she called out. The man with the long face was at her side in a moment. “This fish has gone off.” She pushed her plate away from her. The man took it without comment, though she’d eaten half.
At last Father returned, white-faced, his pipe trailing the scent of his tobacco. “There’s been some trouble down by Gostinny Dvor. Shots fired. We should all avoid Nevsky for the next few hours.”
“Who shot? The soldiers or the strikers?” How could I get around my parents and find out what was going on?
“I’m ready to avoid the entire mad city,” said our great-aunt, placing her napkin on the table, signaling the end of the meal. “We’ve met with our bankers, I see no point in lingering, do you, Masha, dear?”
“I should say not,” said our disgruntled cousin.
“We can be back in Moscow by morning.” The old lady stuck her face nose to nose with the pop-eyed pug. “What do you say, Potemkin? Let us leave the asylum to the inmates. Maybe next year they’ll have come to their senses.” She stood and we rose to kiss her and Cousin Masha. Mother embraced her old relative with an affection that surprised them both, knocking their hats together.
It was the last time we ever saw the two Mariyas.
12 Incident at Znamenskaya Square
IN THE WATER-GRAY first light, the sidewalks already exuded a bristly, nervy energy. I hurried after Seryozha. For a change, he was the one who’d woken early, rousing me from sleep, determined to spend the day at the demonstrations—with Solomon Moiseivich. I understood. After our luncheon at the Hotel Europa, I needed no urging.
Fresh posters had been stuck to the walls overnight, and groups of people stood around reading them.
FROM TODAY FORWARD, ALL STREET ASSEMBLIES WILL BE DECLARED OUTLAWED AND SUBJECT TO ARREST. TROOPS WILL FIRE TO MAINTAIN ORDER. ALL WORKERS ARE HEREBY INSTRUCTED TO RETURN TO THEIR FACTORIES BY TUESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 28, OR SUFFER CANCELED MILITARY DEFERMENTS AND BE INDUCTED INTO DUTY ON THE FRONT LINE. BY ORDER OF THE MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR.
“Guess you better go home now, kids. Papa’s mad,” joked a man in a corduroy cap.
“This time we’re ready for Papa.” His friend rattled a bag in the palm of his hand. It jingled, full of metal.
“The reserves don’t want this fight any more than we do,” said an old man with hands the size of dinner plates. “They’ll come over to our side.”
“Yeah? You saw ’em yesterday. Move along. Bugger off.”
Seryozha, halfway down the street, called to me to hurry. But I wanted to hear what the workers were saying. “What happened yesterday?” I asked the man in the corduroy cap.
“Police fired on the crowd up near Gostinny Dvor.”
I was glad Seryozha couldn’t hear that. “Are you worried? About being sent to the front?”
The man with the metal said, “Nobody’s going anywhere, devushka. It’s them’s going somewhere. Straight to the devil is where.”
As we approached Nevsky, we could see the demonstrators already crowding the boulevard. At the Katzevs’ building Varvara had just arrived. She rushed up to us. “They’re rallying out in the districts. Bigger crowds than yesterday. The government’s raised the bridges—as if that’s going to do any good.” Raising the bridges on the Neva was a time-honored tactic but an iced-over river in February was not much of a barrier. “Everyone’s running across. The police don’t dare shoot. They know the least spark and—babakh!” She flung her hands upward and out. I could picture the workers, their dark coats and caps, running across the frozen expanse. Small figures against white like living sheet music. The city was coming together like two halves of a brain—what the reactionaries feared most. “It’s beyond protest now,” she said. “It’s revolution.”
Revolution. The great brazen sound of the word rang in my bones, resounded in the bell of my chest. It had us hypnotized, promising resurrection, a cleansing, after which Goodness and Future would emerge like the shining city of God.
We climbed to the fifth floor—Seryozha running ahead—but by the time we got to Mina’s, her father had left. “Come in, have breakfast,” her mother urged, but we grabbed Mina and fled back down to the street, resisting her sisters’ pleas to take them along. Sofia Yakovlevna let loose a skein of warnings that trailed after us like scarves.
The rising sun fingered the tops of the buildings as we came out onto the street. A crisp winter day. The soft snow that had fallen during the night gave the gathering crowds a holiday spirit. The transparent blue of the sky arched above us like the dome of a church. Seryozha raced ahead, not caring that he was alone, watching for Solomon Moiseivich. Varvara thought he was most likely to be photographing workers crossing the river and gathering at Palace Square. Sullen-faced soldiers clustered on corners and mounted police trotted in the streets. I fell back with Mina, who was having trouble keeping up. She stopped to catch her breath, bent over at the waist, bracing herself on her knees. “Do we really have to run? Won’t they be coming this way?”
In a gathering chorus, church be
lls rang out. It was Sunday. Kazan Cathedral, the Lutheran church, the Armenian church, the Church of the Spilled Blood all sounded their benedictions. A good sign.
“Listen.” Varvara stopped us with outstretched arms. She didn’t mean the bells. Yes, from the direction of the Neva they came. Little black figures, the swaying red banners. Steam rose from the assembled mass, so many lungs, and as the bells faded, the sound grew deep and wide, a song. At first you couldn’t hear words, but then they became clear. “Arise, arise, working people. Arise against the enemies, hungry brother!” Homemade banners and signs from factories swashed overhead, METAL WORKERS NO. 14, ADMIRALTY SHIPYARD ON STRIKE! But also newer, more militant slogans: DOWN WITH THE AUTOCRACY! RUSSIA OUT OF THE WAR! SOCIALISM MEANS STRENGTH OF THE MANY! It thrilled me to see their demands, right out in the open. The emperor’s father would know what to do. At the curb, we caught up with Seryozha, his sketchbook open, attempting to capture the flow of humanity. A man, skin burned by some kind of chemical work. A tall woman in a white scarf, a chin like a doubled fist, leading a chant: Give us bread! Give us peace! Faces Kolya might have picked to be his messengers.
Suddenly Varvara grabbed my arm and stepped into a passing line of strikers.
My brother and Mina stood frozen like two rabbits on the curb. “Come on, Seryozha!” I called. But he pointed in the direction of the river and Solomon Moiseivich, and soon I lost sight of him as the marchers swept us along in the opposite direction, east, away from the river and toward Gostinny Dvor. Varvara was practically jumping with excitement. “Where are you from, brothers?” she asked the men marching with us. A blond man with a big moustache and a thick patched coat black with grease replied, “Ericsson.” The big manufacturer of telephones and other electronic devices. These men were taking a tremendous risk striking—it was one of the militarized industries. They weren’t just putting their jobs on the line. Their strike was tantamount to treason. Their bravery made me feel very young and frivolous, like a colt who’d decided to follow its mother in harness. People at the Hotel Europa stared at us from the window as we marched by. I wondered if the two Mariyas were still in Petrograd, if they could see me.