She thought I was in love with Genya because it was fashionable. But he was hardly representative of “the lower classes” as she so horrifyingly put it. I popped a blackberry in my mouth, sweet and sour, and brought the rest to her. She ate them as we continued our walk.
“Was there no one before you and Papa married?” It was something I’d always wanted to know but never dared ask.
The trees shimmered in a sudden burst of wind. She had to hold her hat to keep it from taking off like a gull. How could she still be so beautiful, that elegant profile with the straight, sculpted nose, the finely turned mouth? “A boy came to visit one summer. He was staying on the Zarkovskys’ estate. Grisha, his name was. He played tennis very beautifully. He moved like it was music.” She frowned. “But relations between men and women are overemphasized, in my opinion. It’s not as important as you think it is right now.”
I’d never heard her speak about anything so personal. Though I couldn’t have disagreed with her more, I wanted to hear what she actually thought about love. “What is important then?”
“Harmony,” she said. She stroked her fingertips along a white aspen trunk. “Nature. One’s feeling for deeper things.” Tulku disappeared into the bushes—after a rabbit most likely. “Your father never cared for the country. I wouldn’t mind staying on here.” She reached down and plucked a dandelion, held the head without blowing the floss, twirling it in her hand. “Actually, I’m dreading going back into that hurricane. It’s so peaceful here. Don’t you feel it? It reminds me of so many things.”
I felt it myself, this nostalgia, but I waved it away. “You’d miss your friends if you didn’t go back.”
“They can take care of themselves,” she said.
I ate a blackberry, but it was too sour. I spit it out. “I start university in a few weeks, remember?”
“If there’s a university left,” she said.
Whether or not there was a university, there was Gennady Kuriakin. My university. My Petrograd. Nadezhda Lyubova, my hope, my love.
I sat in the kitchen watching Annoushka make bread, the room dim compared to the brightness outside. She was a fount of information, had opinions about everything. “What if we just stopped paying taxes? What’s Russia to us? What’s this war to us? Nobody asked us what we thought.” She turned the loaf over, kneading it, pummeling it. “When is this repartition going to happen? That’s what I want to know. The tsar’s gone. What are they waiting for?” It was on everybody’s mind, the division of the land. She stopped to wipe sweat from her brow with the back of a floury hand. “What does Dmitry Ivanovich say?”
I knew exactly what he would say because I’d asked him that myself. These things take time. The landowner has to be compensated. If she and the others were looking for the land to be seized and distributed into peasant hands, they shouldn’t be looking to the Provisional Government. Even the SRs in power now didn’t have the nerve. “I don’t think they’re any closer,” I admitted. “Only the Soviet is talking about it seriously.”
“Well, bless you for telling the truth,” she said, turning the loaf over and punching it down. “We’ve heard the peasants in Ryazan are taking the land and the hell with the landowner. They’re burning them out down there. Killing them in their beds, so they say.” Annoushka cut her wicked eyes at me, just to make sure I got the message, then fell dutifully to her task.
Ever since the tsar’s fall, the peasants had been waiting for the redistribution of the land. Soldiers were deserting so they could come home and be part of it. They believed that if they weren’t physically present when the land was parceled out, they wouldn’t get their share. They were deserting by the tens of thousands. I watched Annoushka finish the bread and slide it into the oven with a paddle. Although I didn’t believe she and Grigorii were going to slit our throats as we slept, change was in the wind. Sooner or later, I saw, we were going to lose Maryino. We were living on borrowed time.
I asked if she’d heard anything about the food situation in the capital. Were provisions from here getting into the city? Something had to relieve those bread queues. Father said the Provisional Government could do nothing because the railways were so poor and the army was eating most of the bread. Anything that got on the trains came off before it got to us in the city.
“It’s all going to the army, isn’t it?” Annoushka said, wiping the table down. “The pirates. They come and take what they want, pay us a few kopeks. Over in Alekhovshchina, they refused to go along with one bunch. Cut off their heads with scythes, they say.” The musky scent of yeast and the wood burning in the big oven smelled like home—yet the terrible things she was saying took away all familiarity.
I thought of Kolya and his provisioning unit. Was that what he was doing all this time—robbing the peasants for the army? Yes, I imagined that was exactly what he was doing. He was completely capable of seizing a village’s grain if they refused to accept the price he offered. I had seen the toughness behind the charm.
I had to get back to Petrograd. Somehow I had to tear Mother away from her nostalgic dream—though first I had to put it away myself.
As the light changed and the days shortened, we still heard nothing from Father, and my urgency grew sharper. Mother began to talk about having our winter clothes shipped to us. I had to do something or all would be lost. One afternoon I found her on the porch, where she sat in Grandmère’s rocker, listening to the harvest songs coming from the fields with a pleasure deeper than joy. How could I rob her of this? Yet it had to come. It would have been so much easier if we’d been quarreling, but I felt closer to her than I had in years. “I hope Father calls us home soon,” I said. “Annoushka says the peasants are speaking out against the estates.”
She said nothing, just kept rocking.
“The deserters are coming back. They’re tired of waiting for the repartition. They’re taking the land on their own. Annoushka says they’re burning the manor houses.”
“Annoushka’s imagination is running away with her,” Mother said.
“It’s already happening in Babayevo.” Babayevo was a hundred versts away—hours on horseback, yet close enough for ideas to spread.
Her eyes slowly opened, the long lashes just like Seryozha’s. “Our peasants won’t do that. We’ve known them for four generations. They can barely sharpen a scythe let alone take over Maryino.”
I shrugged. “The revolution’s not just in the city. It’s in the izbas, in the fields. They’re talking about it. They’ve been waiting since Emancipation.”
Mother shaded her eyes against the glare. The pines rustled behind me, throwing their patterns of sun and shade on the side of the house. “You’re on their side, aren’t you?”
“You can’t support the peasant in the abstract and deny him in fact,” I said. “This is the reality—the soldiers are coming back and they’re armed. They want the land.”
I saw how she clutched at the pendant around her neck. “Even Kerensky said that there would be no expropriations.”
She’d become too attached to the illusion of safety, as if Maryino could sink beneath the waters and life could continue as it always had been. Illusion and nostalgia surrounded her like a fog. I felt it myself, but I had to shake it off. “The peasants are tired of waiting. The deserters are taking matters into their own hands. Annoushka said they’re nailing the landlords into their manor houses and setting them on fire.”
“Wishful thinking,” she said. But she was sitting up straight now, brushing off her skirt in irritated little gestures. Probably remembering all the insolences of Grigorii and the coachman and the way the peasants didn’t bow when she rode through the fields.
“We don’t want to be here when the division comes, Mama. We can’t stop them, but we don’t have be here when it happens.”
We heard the dog barking at something in the woods. She clapped her hands and called until he broke from the trees and raced onto the porch. She petted his narrow head. “Your father would never expo
se us to any danger,” she said, but she was only reassuring herself. “He would have sent for us.”
I was about to mention that he’d sent Seryozha to Moscow, too, recklessly, but Mother looked so pained every time I brought that up. “He’s distracted. He’s got the whole country to think about. But you see how they look at us—Grigorii, Annoushka. They’re already thinking it’s theirs.”
“Stop it.” She lifted Tulku onto her lap and kissed his hard little head. “They’ve got their revolution. What more do they want?”
A woodsman was felling a tree somewhere. She flinched at the resonating blows of the ax.
“If we were murdered, Papa might not know for weeks,” I added.
“Don’t exaggerate,” she snapped. But the skin had drawn tighter over her cheekbones. Her nose seemed suddenly sharp.
That night she penned a letter. I watched her at Grandfather’s desk, stopping to wipe her eyes with a handkerchief, blow her nose. It had finally sunk in that she might well be losing Maryino. She scratched out a passage, rewrote something on the back, took out a new sheet, recopied. I think she was trying for a reasonable tone to plead our case, one that would convey the seriousness of our situation here without opening her up to ridicule. Then she started crying again, her forehead against her balled-up fist. I wanted to run to her, embrace her, and tell her I’d made it all up. But everything was true, except for the bit about Babayevo. And who knew? That, too, could be true by now. There was no helping it. All the signs said it was time to go.
In the morning, she called Grigorii and gave him the letter, even said “please” when she sent him off, coins jingling in his pocket, to catch the first post.
23 Return to Petrograd
I WAS NEVER SO happy to see the slums of the Vyborg side as I was that September day. The autumn sun shone on the gold spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress, and the panorama as we crossed over the Neva at the Liteiny Bridge was more breathtaking than ever. A tram rattled by—trams! This wonderful noise—traffic, crowds, shops. How I loved this city, the smell of its smoke, the throngs milling on the wide sidewalks, the shimmering canals. My city, my Petrograd.
But on Furshtatskaya Street all that awaited us in greeting were twelve slightly dirty rooms and Basya. “Where is Dmitry Ivanovich?” Mother asked as our bags were carried in.
“At work, missus,” Basya said. “Where else would he be?”
Missus. Mother took her hat off very, very slowly, put it on the hall table, removed her gloves finger by finger. Surrendering to this new rudeness by quarter inches.
“It’s only a cold dinner I can get you,” the maid continued, as if she hadn’t noticed a thing. “He doesn’t eat at home now, and we weren’t expecting you till tomorrow.”
“Yes, all right,” Mother said. “I’ll take it in my room.” She retreated to her bedroom, closely followed by Avdokia, muttering curses under her breath. Ginevra, however, sighed with pleasure at the end of our journey. I supposed she had found the separation from the city harder than even I had. The dvornik and his son carted our trunks in. I slipped out to the kitchen, where Basya was resting, watching Vaula chop cucumbers for a salad, and eased past them, heading for the back stairs.
“Look at the little chit,” Basya said. “Going out already. Go then. Don’t mind me.”
“Murders on this very block,” Vaula said, looking up from her cutting board, her round blue eyes drooping a warning. “Things have changed since you left. You might not want to go out there by yourself.”
“Maybe I’ve changed a little, too.” I stole a slice of cucumber from the board. “Anybody come looking for me?”
“Who could the girl be talking about?” Basya said to the cook.
Vaula laughed, salting the sliced rounds.
“You know very well who.” I would have twisted her scrawny arm if I thought it would help.
A bell rang on the bell board: my mother’s room. Basya snickered as she passed me, her breath smelling of cinnamon and tobacco. “Ivan Tsarevich, you mean? That big hooligan shouting poems at the windows? Sure, he stood out there caterwauling until your father threatened to call the police on him if he ever saw him again. The idiot came back a few more times just to be sure. Foma saw him out there after midnight, at two, maybe three in the morning, watching your windows.”
I kissed her on both cheeks and ran out the back door, down the stairs, into the courtyard, and out to the street.
The city was even shabbier than I remembered it—perhaps I’d sprinkled it with a bit of Lyuda’s imagined glamour in my mind. But it was still Petrograd and I loved every dirty beggar as I ran toward Sadovaya and Haymarket Square. The noise, the shops, the miraculous automobiles rushing through the streets. It was September, and the cool river air had swept summer from the pavement. I ran all the way to Grivtsova Alley, racing up the stinking stairs to the Poverty Artel. I knocked, called out. “Genya! Open up!” I could not wait for him to touch me, to feel his arms again, his kiss. I knocked again. Nothing. This was it, wasn’t it? The worn door—number 8.
But there was no one home. They’d probably gone to shout their poetry from the rooftops, I told myself, but anything could have happened. They might have been drafted or evicted. The mail took forever to arrive. Yet why should they be home this time of the evening? Genya had no idea I was returning today. Still, I could not keep tears from rising. The mountains I’d had to climb to get here, the plots I’d had to orchestrate! I descended the stairs at half the pace I’d flown up them. Out in the courtyard, women waiting to pump water followed me with their eyes. I called to them, “Do the boys on the second floor still live here? The poets?”
“Who else would have them?” one of the women called out and the others laughed.
I couldn’t run around Petrograd looking for them. Instead I stopped in at the one place where I was certain someone would be home. From the hall, I could hear lively hands playing ragtime on the piano. Shusha’s skills had certainly progressed since spring. I knocked hard and Dunya answered the door. She was wearing a rust-colored dress with an embroidered sunflower on the pocket—Seryozha’s handwork. I burst into tears.
She threw her arms around me, pulled me inside. The smell of soup, of kasha embraced me as ever. Shusha jumped up from the piano—“Mariiiina!”—and hugged me hard. “Did you hear me? It’s the ‘Maple Leaf Rag’! Mama just got it for me.” She sat back down and began again.
Now I saw Mina—she’d been hidden behind a heap of books like a barricade. She rose and kissed me. “She can’t stop playing it. I could kill her. Look at you—you’re a peasant now.” She tugged at my braid, which I hadn’t bothered to put up before I ran out of the house.
My friend looked older, prettier, in a crisp white blouse and necktie, her hair worn in a fashionable coil instead of its old-fashioned crown. A studentka. I realized with a surge of panic that she’d begun university. I’d come home too late. But I refused to mourn. I was back, that was the thing. If Genya was still in Petrograd, if he still wanted me, that would be enough.
“Marina!” Now I saw Solomon Moiseivich on the divan with his foot up on a stool. “I’d get up but gout’s got me. I thought it was the province of kings, but Fate says, ‘For you, Solomon, we’ll make an exception.’”
Sofia Yakovlevna bustled out from the kitchen. “Marina! Welcome home, welcome back.” She wiped her hands on her apron, and then gave me a squeeze and a kiss. “We were wondering whether you’d come home. Your letters didn’t say. Look how healthy you are! Brown as a nut. Where’s your brother?”
“Yes—how’s my favorite assistant?” the photographer inquired.
They didn’t know. I looked again at Dunya’s dress, thinking of how he’d sewn those flowers. “They sent him to Moscow, to a military school. To become an engineer.”
“You’re joking,” Mina said. She pushed her glasses up on her nose, the better to study me. I shook my head.
Solomon Moiseivich rounded his eyes at his wife, speaking whole treatises in that
single glance. “Well. Engineering’s a good trade.”
“I’m sure Dmitry Ivanovich has his reasons,” Sofia Yakovlevna said quickly, then patted my shoulder. “Sit down, Marina. I’ll get you a glass of tea.” But a note of worry hung in the air.
I took a chair next to Mina. “So you’ve started without me.” I picked up one of her heavy books—chemistry. I would not cry. I was home, that was the important thing. “How is it?”
“Lots of work.” She shrugged, pretending it was all such a burden, but I could tell how proud she was. “Rumor has it they might cancel the term because of the food shortages. I’m trying to get as much done as I can.”
I laid the book back down on the pile. “It’s that bad?”
She nodded. “People are leaving every day. Going south. Going abroad. We were wondering if you’d even be back.”
“Did you deliver my letters?” I asked under my breath.
Mina smiled, showing her pretty small teeth. “What do you think, that I’d stand in the way of true love?” She tugged at my long braid again. “Actually I didn’t even need to deliver them. He comes by with his friends—at dinnertime, naturally. Dunya’s got a crazy crush on the painter.”
“Oh, so I’ve got the crush.” Dunya threw a wadded-up paper at her. “Tell her about Nikolai Shurov.”
Mina’s cheeks blazed.
I could feel myself go pale in equal measure. “What about him?”
“He came to town is all,” Mina answered, studying her smooth hands, the little sapphire ring she wore. “I ran into him at the pharmacy.” She shrugged again. “He’d gone to your parents’ looking for you.”