17 White Swans and Black Sheep
EVERYTHING AT THE MARIINSKY Theater spoke of the new era. Workers and soldiers I’d marched with now sat on gilded chairs, shoulder to shoulder with my bourgeois family, waiting for the performance of Swan Lake. Mother chatted self-consciously with our guests, the English second secretary, his wife, and an attaché, but I noticed she’d left her sealskin coat on, so she would not have to reveal the cut of her elegant clothes. The bones of her face stood out anxiously, and small lines grooved her mouth. The group exchanged commonplaces about mutual friends, as if nothing in the least bit extraordinary was happening, while the shabbily clad women workers seated in front of us estimated aloud how much fabric it must have taken to create the ornate curtain. I tried to imagine how it must feel to enter this gilded hall after a long shift at Okhta or Belhausen. Their factory committees had evidently distributed free tickets. “I thought it would be bigger, didn’t you?” said one in a red scarf. An older woman examined the tiers of loges. “Glad I’m not up there. I’d be afraid to open my eyes.”
I felt suddenly protective of the ballet. Would they like it? Would they find it stilted and ridiculous? What if they didn’t understand? Would there be a riot? Or would they love it, these workers, these soldiers, who might only have ever heard a guitar or a wheezy accordion? I couldn’t wait for them to witness the power of the orchestra, the artistry of the dancers. This was their culture, their birthright. I prayed the introduction would go well.
Seryozha, next to me, drew the trio of women before us in their scarves, posed against the backdrop of the baroque curtain’s swags and tassels. I Thought It Would Be Bigger, he titled it. Behind us, the imperial box, whose coat of arms lay shrouded in white, was filled with the exiles I recognized from the train station: Breshkovskaya, in the same crushed hat she’d worn when she arrived. I couldn’t stop turning and staring, so miraculous to see them in seats just a month ago reserved exclusively for the imperial family.
The soldier next to Father chewed handfuls of sunflower seeds and spit the shells on the floor. My father surreptitiously kicked them off his shoes while keeping his careful composure. I understood why the man did it—to show that the place didn’t intimidate him, when clearly it did. Suddenly, the attaché flinched, as if stung by a bee, and recovered a paper airplane that had hit him in the back of his head. We turned to see who’d thrown it. Pavlik Gershon waved from the balcony.
My brother eyed him. “What happened to Kolya?”
“You mind your own business,” I said.
The lights dimmed. People called out as if some trick was about to be played on them, and the jarring notes of the orchestra tuning added to their anxiety. But with the tapping of the conductor’s baton and the first woodwind notes of the overture, they quieted down, and at last the curtain rose. First there were gasps, whispers, then laughter as the new audience beheld the stylized movements and the men in hose. The soldier next to my father hooted merrily, “Hey, Prince, you forgot your pants!” The dancers in the corps bravely forged ahead despite the catcalls. Father’s face betrayed nothing, but if Mother had been a horse she would have bolted.
Soon the grace of the ballerinas began to charm the newcomers, and the jester’s athletic leaps drew vigorous shouts of approval. What a thrill for the dancer—knowing that this was a spontaneous, visceral reaction to his art! Audience and performers were getting to know each other, minute by minute gaining respect for one another. When the soldier next to Father called for the dancers to drink from their goblets instead of twirling around—“You’ll never get drunk that way, Ivan!”—others shushed him. Yet I sensed the orchestra rushing, trying to get through it. When the curtain closed, Mother sat back as if she’d just run a mile and fanned herself with the program.
I prayed that the second act, with its brooding music and mysterious dark woods, would be more gripping. The sighs as the curtain rose were as sweet as music to me as the viewers beheld the blue enchanted trees, the lake of the stage. The company’s von Rothbart performed in fine, defiant form with bravura leaps and wonderfully evil wings. Poor Prince Siegfried, however, was catcalled for his handling of the hunter’s bow. At last Karsavina entered as Odette, the enchanted swan. Oh, her slim white-clad figure with its crown of feathers, so pale against that otherworldly background. She balanced en pointe on those impossibly slender legs, alone in the center of the big stage. Even the soldier who had been spitting sunflower-seed shells on Father’s shoes stopped to gape. I watched the returnees. Had they ever dreamed, in their prison cells and cold nights of exile, that someday they would watch Swan Lake from the tsar’s own box, the workers and soldiers of Petrograd all around them?
“I didn’t think I’d survive that,” Mother sighed, tipping back her champagne flute. “‘Hey, Prince, you forgot your pants!’”
“I thought it very democratic,” said Mr. Sibley, the British second secretary, taking blini from Basya’s platter. “I’ve always supported audience participation in ballet.”
I refused to laugh along with the rest of them. Those soldiers didn’t have chandeliers and dining rooms waiting for them. Those workers weren’t drinking champagne and sneering at anyone, they were curled up on thin mattresses, trying to snatch a little sleep before their shifts in the morning.
Seryozha pressed his hands to his cheek, fluttering his eyelashes, and nodded over toward Miss Haddon-Finch, who was doing her best to flirt with the attaché. She looked almost pretty tonight, with high collar and cameo pin, as she tried to engage him in conversation. But his answers were short, perfunctory. Instead, he set out to flatter me, the daughter of the household and presumably a more useful connection. “That dress is lovely, Miss Makarova. The blue sets off your hair. It’s like a painting.”
How I hated a snob. “But it’s not blue. It’s green. A beautiful Irish green.”
Seryozha snickered. Even Miss Haddon-Finch smiled. Mother glanced at me with twitchy-tailed irritation. Stop it.
Getting nowhere with me, the attaché turned his attention to Father, and the two of them reminisced about Oxford. Sibley, too, was an Oxford man, and Father launched into recollections of the year we spent at Christ Church while he was lecturing on international trade law. Seryozha mimed falling asleep in his plate. He ate a potato and asked to be excused. “Sorry—homework,” he said. I prepared to follow suit, but before I had a chance, Mother shook her head. Don’t even think it.
Square-jawed Mrs. Sibley, congenitally cheerful, brought up the newly completed Trans-Siberian Railway, which took travelers all the way from Petrograd to Vladivostok. “What an adventure, don’t you think?”
“Two weeks on a train, to end up in Vladivostok?” My mother laughed. “What could be better?” She’d returned to her witty self.
The Englishwoman turned to Father. “Dmitry Ivanovich, surely you would be interested in seeing the vast hinterlands of your country.”
Father smiled, amused at the very idea. “I’m afraid I’m in rare agreement with my wife.” He tapped the lip of his flute to signal Basya to pour more champagne. “However, the Trans-Siberian’s more than a mere outing, Mrs. Sibley. It’s our hope for the future. Siberia holds eighty percent of our wealth—our grain, our ore. Alas, the rail system’s a shambles. Without it we can’t get the raw materials to the factories, food to the front. I don’t have to mince words with you, Sibley. We have everything we need to push the Germans back to Berlin but workable rail stock.” He shook his head before taking a bite of Vaula’s golden trout.
Sibley sprinkled caviar on a blin with a small bone spoon. “I do hope you’ll persuade Miliukov of the urgency. It won’t be difficult to secure our help.”
I bet not. The British would sell their own mothers to keep Russia in the war. The British had declared their support for the Provisional Government within hours of the abdication. They didn’t care who was running things as long as the Russians kept throwing bodies into the machine.
“This new coalition—what’s the feeling a
bout the commitment?” asked Sibley. “The SRs especially.”
“La guerre, toujours la guerre.” My mother traced a plume in the air, as if she could clear the war talk from their minds with the impatient gesture. It was spoiling the effervescence. “We’re educated people. Surely we can talk about—the weather?”
“It’s not our war,” I blurted out.
Father turned on me as if blackbirds had flown out of my mouth.
Now I was in for it, but I couldn’t stop myself. “We had no say in it. The people want peace. They’re demanding it. It’s why they toppled the tsar.”
Miss Haddon-Finch flushed, red creeping up her ears. “Men serving in other countries are depending on Russia,” she said tremulously. It wasn’t like her to express a strong opinion on politics in our house, but I’d forgotten about her brother, fighting in France.
Mother said to Mrs. Sibley, “Our eldest, you know, is with Brusilov, at the Southwestern Front. Cavalry.”
“And his men favor a fight to victory,” Father said, his eyes leveling at me. “It’s only our local untrained reserves who talk about retreat. Where are you getting your ideas, Marina?”
As if I hadn’t seen the banners, hadn’t noticed the queues.
“The people have no idea what they want,” Father continued. “Remember the signs? On one side they said, ‘Down with the war,’ and on the other ‘Down with the German woman.’” The guests all chuckled. “They just don’t know what’s involved. We have alliances, as Miss Haddon-Finch so kindly pointed out.” The Englishwoman blushed, pleased to be noticed by Dmitry Ivanovich, in whom she placed much more store than in any wet-lipped attaché.
I suddenly saw my father through the eyes of the Ericssons, through the eyes of the women at the pump. The arrogance of him, when it was the courage of those people that had brought him into power. “How can you say you know what the people need if you’re not listening to them? They can’t fight anymore. They need the war to end.”
“Marina, that’s enough,” Mother said.
Father’s fury was apparent in the tightness of his mouth, the way he looked away as he sipped his champagne.
But he would hear me out. “What about our soldiers—fighting without guns, without boots? What about our own hungry workers? They didn’t agree to those alliances. But they pay the price.”
Mother arched her neck in a slow, resigned circle, her eyes closed. All she cared about was that I was ruining her party.
“Everyone’s suffering, Miss Makarova,” the British diplomat replied gently. “France has been a battlefield for three years.”
Father picked up his napkin ring and dropped it gently on the tablecloth, tapping it, something he did when he was concentrating. “If Russia pulls out, millions will die. You want that on your conscience?”
I heard in my voice that horrible tremolo it got when I felt passionate about something. “You’ve seen the queues.” I addressed the second secretary. “The people work all day and queue all night. There’s no bread. No fuel. Boys drilling on Liteiny are barely Seryozha’s age. How much longer can you expect us to hold out?”
“It’s complex,” said Mr. Sibley. “Is this what young people are thinking?”
“Russia will not abandon its allies,” Father said firmly. “A commitment’s a commitment. And I’ve seen your marks for German, my dear. They’ve never been that good.” In Russian he added, “One more word and you’ll take your meal in the kitchen. You’re being insufferable.”
I collected my plate, my knife and fork, and stood with what gravity I could still muster. “I’m afraid you must excuse me then.”
In the kitchen, the servants looked up from their tea—Vaula cutting a cake, Basya with her feet up, waiting to clear and bring out dessert, Avdokia mending my nightshirt. Clearly I’d interrupted a juicy bit of gossip, probably about us.
“I’ve been exiled,” I said and put down my plate among them.
“At least it was a short walk,” said Basya. Avdokia frowned. Vaula tried not to laugh.
18 Cirque Moderne
SUCH FREEDOM, TO WALK alone in the evening with friends, unhampered by parental rules, participating in the serious discussions that had become daily life in the city. Everywhere people were arguing, voicing opinions, joining committees, trying out lines of reasoning, flexing political muscle. We were talking about the war as we drifted across the Field of Mars in the enchanted, unearthly northern spring twilight. “The Germans will bring back the tsar,” said Pavlik. “They’ll reverse everything we’ve achieved.”
In the half-light, it was still bright enough to see the color of the girls’ spring coats. Also the heavy length of Pavlik’s eyelashes. The trees smelled fresh and the square glowed, the long yellow buildings dizzying in perspective, an uninterrupted pattern of columns and windows. Seryozha lagged behind, thinking his own private thoughts. Here on these broad parade grounds, we’d sent Kolya and Volodya off to war. Here we’d buried 184 martyrs of the revolution just two months ago, a solemn day. I would never forget the sight of those coffins next to their resting places, imagining the student in one of them. And our parents walking in procession with members of the Provisional Government, everyone singing “You Fell Victim” until your heart would burst.
“That’s a spurious argument and you’re a capitalist dupe, Pavlik, like all the Defensists,” Varvara called over her shoulder. “If we stop the war, the German workers will win their soldiers over, just like we did, and the kaiser will fall. We have to stop the shooting, and bring them over to the revolution.”
I wasn’t really in the mood to argue tonight. The beauty of the evening made me think of my fox, my real lover. If he were here, we wouldn’t be talking about the war, wasting the spring twilight. We’d stroll in the fragrant air, our footsteps matching, and stop to kiss on the bridge over the Winter Canal. We’d be in bed before the hour was out. What I would give just to press my forehead to his, drink in the honey smell of his skin once more.
“What do you think of this new Bolshevik?” asked a girl from our school, Alla, trailing behind us. Recently, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had returned from exile, and his April Theses had just run in the Bolshevik newspaper Rabochy Put’. “They say he’s against the Republic.”
Varvara sighed, as if Alla had woken up in the third act of a play and asked for a précis. “First, he’s not new,” she replied. “And second, he’s not against the Republic. He’s against a parliamentary republic, a bourgeois republic. Your papas, thinking they speak for the people. He wants a soviet republic—by direct representation.”
“What we need are free communes,” said another Herzen boy, Markus, an anarchist. “Lenin talks about the ‘withering away of the state,’ but the essence of the state is that there’s never a good time to wither.”
“The Bolsheviks will do it,” Varvara said, sticking her chin out.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Markus said.
They were two of a kind. They stopped to light cigarettes together, sharing a match. I thought he would be perfect for her, but she’d scoffed when I suggested it. “Anarchist utopian.”
We crossed at the Trinity Bridge over the black water of the Neva, passed the brooding bulk of the Peter and Paul Fortress, and the art nouveau Kschessinska Mansion, now the headquarters of the Bolshevik Party. The ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska had received it as a gift from her lover Nikolas II. I wondered where she’d gone. Paris? The tsar himself was under arrest, somewhere in the Urals with his family. Oddly, since his abdication he’d quickly become irrelevant. Nobody clamored for his head on a pike. Aside from a few aristocrats who might secretly dream of restoration, no one thought about him anymore. Varvara examined the windows of the mansion, probably hoping to catch sight of Lenin’s big bald head.
Our destination loomed into view—the vast, rickety hall of the Cirque Moderne, the radical venue for speakers of all left-leaning political stripes that spring, and a magnet for students from all over the city. Where once the Stray
Dog had been Mecca, now it was this old wooden hall on the Petrograd side of the river. Pressing inside, we joined the thousands already listening to the orators in the cavernous smoky gloom. It smelled like bodies, wet wood and cheap tobacco, old boots. About five dim bulbs lit our way as we clambered up into the rickety tiered benches surrounding the stage on all sides. We had to climb nearly to the ceiling. I imagined what the woman who’d worried about the loges at the Mariinsky would think of this. I could tell that Seryozha was nervous as we squeezed in among the university students, workers, soldiers, retirees, and wounded veterans. Pavlik climbed in next to me.
Down in the very center of the hall, a common soldier, stocky, square-shouldered, was addressing the crowd, speaking about the war in the name of his comrades. “Show us what we’re fighting for,” he shouted up to us all. “Is it Constantinople? Or a free Russia? Or the people on top? They’re always asking us for more sacrifices, but where is their sacrifice?”
If only my father could hear this. If only he’d listen more to the Russian people and less to his friends in the British embassy and the Kadets and industrialists. Where are you getting your ideas, Marina? Pavlik handed me a chocolate, smiled. He really was very sweet. How infinitely better this was than wandering the lengthening evenings thinking of how little Kolya cared for me. He never responded to my letters. My brother took out his notebook and sketched the soldier, and the next one who ventured to speak.
The best speaker was a small fiery man with wild black hair and a pince-nez named Leon Trotsky. They all had something to say, but I had waited for this one. What a speaker! He’d been the leader of the Soviet of 1905 and had just returned from exile. Trotsky made us understand that this moment was a fuse and that we held the match, that the whole world was on the brink of revolution. All we had to do was light it. He was a cauldron melting the crowd into a single substance, and we threw ourselves in.