Promptly at nine, the electric lights went out, and Avdokia lit the lamps. At ten, Mother uncoiled her silver coif before the dressing table, appraising herself in the mirror as Avdokia brushed her hair smooth. At ten after by the old travel clock on the dresser, there was a knock on the door—light, rattling, intimate—but it was far too late to be anyone we knew.
“Don’t answer,” Avdokia whispered. “For the love of God.” She blew out the lamp nearest her, and Mother blew out the other one on the table.
“Makarova.” Spoken with a teasing menace. A man’s voice with its dry rasp. We waited in the dark, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. The Antichrist had come himself, right into the heart of the city, where every Cheka officer in town was looking for him. Though if Varvara was right, there weren’t many Chekists left—they’d all gone to Moscow. “Don’t hide under the covers,” the voice came again. “You insult my intelligence.”
I lit the lamp. It was ridiculous to try to hide from him. I had set this in motion. It was up to me to finish it. Avdokia grabbed my sleeve as I went to unlock the door, shaking her head, begging me with her eyes, but I pried her loose.
The Archangel looked as unkempt as he had the last times I’d seen him, shabby in an ancient overcoat and crushed broad-brimmed hat, like a horse trader’s, even as the wealth of starving Petrograd flowed into his hands. He glanced about, seemingly casually, but I knew he could read our lives in every chair and table—the mismatched beds, the superior quality of the armoire, the dresser missing one drawer, the chandelier, the smell of our dinner. “Good evening, ladies.”
Avdokia crossed herself, her mouth silently moving in prayer. For once, her spells of protection weren’t being invoked in vain. Mother rose from the dressing table, long hair to her waist shining silver like a priestess’s. She gripped the back of the chair for support but nonetheless stood firm and straight. “Who are you, monsieur? What are you thinking, barging in on respectable people in the middle of the night?”
“Get your coat, Makarova,” he said to me.
“Pardon, monsieur.” Her voice trembled. “My daughter is most assuredly not going anywhere with you. What can you mean by this?”
“I’m taking your daughter, madame. You have nothing else I want or I’d take that too.”
I was already putting my boots on, trying to appear calm and confident. “I’ll be all right. I have a little unfinished business with this gentleman.” I reassured myself with a glance toward Arkady, praying that what I said was true. He didn’t seem angry, but I didn’t know what his anger might look like. Avdokia was crossing herself furiously as I got my coat. It took forever to button it, my fingers were so stiff with fear. In a kind of terrified daze, I wrapped my shawl around my head, took an umbrella from the stand. He opened the door. Avdokia was weeping. I kissed her three times, told her not to worry, nodded at Mother, who nodded back. A whole lifetime in that nod. I had to remember all of it. It could be the last time I ever saw them.
Then Arkady and I walked down the hall.
I knew how a man must feel walking to his execution, although this was more confusing, because I didn’t know if it was an execution or not. We came out onto dripping Furshtatskaya Street. I opened my umbrella, and we began to walk together, his hands in his pockets, rain spilling off the brim of his hat. He made no attempt to touch me or to hold on to me in any way. An odd semblance of a couple we must have made, ambling toward the Tauride Palace—the very route Father took to work in bygone days.
“Can I ask where you’re taking me?”
“To dinner, of course.”
That was a turn I’d never expected. I was intrigued, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. “What if I’ve eaten?”
He stopped. I couldn’t see his face under the broad brim of his hat. “Never say no to me.”
It was more than an order. It was an edict. A commandment. I gave no assent, but it seemed that a pronouncement from him required no agreement. We began walking again. We skirted the Tauride Gardens, fragrant in the wet darkness, the fresh earth and the rain. Where could he be taking me? His legs were very long, and he swung along soundlessly, gracefully, as if just out for a stroll, a man walking with a woman. He didn’t touch me, although I felt he wanted to. Was this some twisted courtship? “Did you like my flowers?” he asked.
I searched for an adequate response. I couldn’t be in the flat with them. We put them in the hall, all the tenants had a little bouquet. I will never be able to smell a hyacinth again without terror. I decided on the most neutral reply. “They were lovely.”
He took my arm in his, and there it was again, to my shame, my strange attraction to him. The way his arm pressed my breast under my layers of clothing excited me.
On the other side of the Tauride Gardens, he led me down the steps to the ground floor of a six-story building, once extremely elegant, now a bit battered, and knocked on a door. A woman opened it partway, saw who it was, and for just a moment, shock and fear were plainly written on her face. Then she slapped a smile over it like a poster slapped onto a wall.
It was a restaurant, a private dining room, such as I’d heard rumors about but never actually seen. I thought they were a myth, the fantasy of a hungry populace. Seven tables occupied a small room, four of them in use by groups of men voluble with drink. The smell was dizzying. The woman took our coats and my dripping umbrella and led us to a table by the fire, replete with a tablecloth and napkins, glasses, cutlery. She offered menus, but Arkady waved them away. “You know what to bring,” he told her.
He did not pull out my chair, so I sat down, smoothed the napkin across my lap. I couldn’t imagine what the prices in a place like this might be. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Who could afford it? Well, from the look of the other patrons, the restaurant catered to criminals, foreigners, and the last haut bourgeois left in Petrograd.
Dishes began to arrive. Mushrooms in sour cream. Solyanka, a meat-rich fragrant soup. Blini and salad, smoked fish and vodka. Arkady ate little, just sat watching me. I tried to eat with indifference, though the florid rumbling of my stomach betrayed me. I drank more than I should have. I was letting myself become careless, noticing my own pretty gestures, my arm falling from the sleeve, the gleaming bangle adorning it. I felt like a performer, like an actress in the smallest theater of all, with an audience of one.
“That bracelet—is that from our old friend Shurov?” He leaned forward and clasped it in his supple hand, turned it to catch the light.
I forced myself not to protect it from his view, to act as if it were nothing. He would catch any slight movement. “It’s from Bukhara.”
“Give it to me.”
I slid the bracelet from my wrist.
He turned it between his fingers, its inlay glowing in the soft light. I wanted to snatch it out of his hands. What right did he have to touch that bangle? “He has an eye, doesn’t he?” He weighed it in his palm and put it in his jacket pocket. “What do you want most in the world, Makarova? If you could have anything. Anything at all.”
The world, unshattered. Love. Books of my poems, read and reread. My brother, alive.
None of which Baron Arkady von Princip could offer. “The success of the revolution,” I said.
He laughed out loud. He removed something from his pocket and slid it under his hand across the table. “Put your hand over mine.”
A shock of electricity to touch his bare skin.
He put his other hand over mine, as in a child’s game, pulled his lower hand away, and I felt what was underneath, a wallet, about the size of a cigarette case. He released my hand, and I lifted it.
On the crumbly dark red calfskin gleamed the Romanov double eagle embossed in gold.
“Open it,” he said. “Discreetly.”
I pulled it onto my lap, opened the clasp. And there, lying against the white satin of the wallet’s lining, appeared a brooch the size of my palm. Four Romanov eagles in gold, perfect down to their beaks, talons, and the crowns betwe
en their double heads, each surmounted by a cross, interspersed by four rubies shaped like arch stones. The eagles were set in diamonds—their bodies, their individual wing feathers, the graduated stones around the rubies. And in the center, St. George on his horse trampled the dragon.
“It’s the Order of Saint George. Catherine the Great gave it to her lady-in-waiting, Countess Alexandra Branitskaya. What do you think? Worth a couple of hours’ trouble, wouldn’t you say?” He lifted one pale eyebrow, gave the hint of a smile.
This is what was in my package at the train station, wrapped in Znamya Truda. This was the price of sanctuary for some high royal family. The wealth of Russia, falling directly into the hands of Arkady von Princip, bypassing its true owners, the Russian people. Crime would find a way—to serve itself.
But what a weight off my shoulders! It had not been stolen after all, it had been duly delivered. I started to cry. My sentence had been commuted. A last-minute stay. Now I could eat the rest of this beautiful dinner in peace.
I watched his face through my tears. All these weeks he had tormented me, left me in the dark. I gazed back into his long, bony face, the sunken cheeks, the wide mouth, the Swedish nose, and saw the pleasure there.
“I thought you understood when you saw the flowers.”
I held out my hand with the wallet under it. He put his hand over it but didn’t pull the wallet away, not immediately. This strange, strange being. His eyes searched me. Would I? Would I stay with him tonight? Yes, I thought. I just might.
It was a good house. There was still power, even after midnight, and the elevator worked. On the fourth floor, a man guarded a door—the bearded man from Kamenny Island with the bushy black eyebrows over his mistrustful eyes. Arkady said something and the man opened the door. I went in first. No one forced me. There was no knife, no gun.
The flat lay empty. Some broken-up furniture, an armoire facedown, a pile of garbage. He led me down the enfilade to a narrow room, beautifully furnished, where a tall stove on the short back wall pumped out a fair amount of heat. Wood was stacked next to it, enough to heat a bourgeoika for a month. The study, it must have been, of a home belonging to some Former family recently decamped. The gold-and-blue style moderne wallpaper showed them to have been a chic family, a touch artistic. Maybe we had known them. A daybed covered in a dark gold velvet sagged against one wall, with a wide-seated Louis XV chair drawn up alongside it.
Arkady closed the door, locked it. I didn’t like the locked door, but there was no turning back now. He slumped into the Louis chair with his usual careless slouch. I was coming to recognize it by now. Keeping his blue eyes on me, casual as unfolding a napkin, he unbuttoned his fly and pulled himself out. His member was enormous, lying there against his thigh.
I didn’t know whether to sit, where to look, whether to laugh or beat on the door. “Touch it,” he said, in his rough, gravelly whisper. “Go on. You’ve been thinking about it all night.”
Had I? Well, yes. I’d been thinking about him, imagining how it might be to be with such a man, to let him touch me, make love to me, but nothing so—bluntly to the point. Well, I was beginning to get the idea. It would be like this—outrageous, unpredictable, a game of nerves. First the terror, then an exquisite dinner…then, Here’s my cock.
And it was certainly impressive—he was obviously proud of it. Even as I watched, it grew, rising like a baby’s arm, or a devil’s tail, from the worn trousers. How he savored my embarrassment. Well, what had I thought this would be about? Roses and aubades? “Come shake hands,” he said. “Make friends with my little man.”
Daring me. I reached out, but just as I brought my fingertips onto that monster, he made it jump, startling me and making me cry out. He laughed and clapped his hand over mine and began to stroke himself. “Oh, you have to be firmer with him. He’s a real Cossack. You’re not painting a pole, you know.”
I gripped it like a pipe, like a wrench or a hammer, something you’d drive nails with, or split logs. “Yes, that’s right, there. Oh, good,” he groaned. “You like how big he is? Tell me, have you ever seen one this size? Your boyfriend Kolya doesn’t even count. He has nothing—he’s practically a woman. This is what a man looks like.” He squeezed my hand around him, up and down. “Spit on it, please.”
I spit on it, making our hands slide more easily. He moaned. “Yes. You’re still a virgin as far as I’m concerned, Makarova. We’ll make you forget all about him. I’ll make you forget about all of them.”
It was true that for size, Kolya was a child by comparison, but Kolya knew how to make love to a woman. So full of delight, and he knew how to bring that to you. He made love as if he were touching the world itself, the world made flesh in your body. Every word, every touch, every joke and caress. Arkady was just stimulating himself. Even in sex, he was lonely and controlling.
“Take that off,” he said, nodding at my dress, letting my hand go. “All of it. I want to see you. I want to see what color your muff is, if your nipples are dark or light.”
I was afraid but excited, too, to see where this would all go. I unbuttoned my dress, removed it slowly, while he ran his hand up and down that tumescent organ. My slip, dingy white, my boots. Perhaps I was the slut my father said I was, but I had to admit, this game aroused me. His voice was hypnotic, it went on and on. “Do you bruise easily, Makarova? I’m not the gentlest man. No—not the stockings. Leave them on.”
Was he trying to scare me? Or was that part of the game? I didn’t know that men his age even wanted to have sex anymore, that they had cocks like that, that I might be as nervous as a virgin—or in my case, even more so. I knew a sensible girl would leave now, would have fled after dinner. But I was not a sensible girl. I was every bit the adventurer he had seen in me that first day. So I did what he asked, and stood before him in my white freckled skin. No wonder he’d heated the room so thoroughly. I let him admire me. I knew I was beautiful. What would he think of me now? Would he really want to bruise this?
“Pale. I was thinking they were dark, because of the hair, but they’re very pale, aren’t they?” he said as he worked on himself. “You’re not as small as you look. The fullness is mostly on the sides, under the arm.” I saw he had to keep talking, that it was the talking that excited him. And it was arousing in a peculiar, unwholesome way. “I knew a girl like that when I was a boy, back in Estonia, a servant on our estate. Very pale skin, but her nipples were larger than yours. And dark. She had done something, I don’t remember what. Stolen something, probably. They dragged her into the yard and stripped her to the waist and beat her. Three lashes. I’ll always remember the sight of those welts rising on that white skin. Her breasts, swaying. It was my first erotic encounter.” His voice was dark, the exciting memory lowering it to a whisper. “And your crimson hair. A shame you cut it. It should fall down your breasts—it would look like dried blood. Think you could take three lashes, Makarova?”
Did he have a whip hidden somewhere in the room? I forced myself to keep my eyes on his, not to glance about nervously. Was it just talk? If I screamed, people would hear me in the other apartments. Someone would break in. Or would they? I had heard women scream on Grivtsova Alley, had watched Genya pound on a door, threaten to kick it in. But he was a long way away.
“Come over here. Closer.”
I imagined the young baron watching the girl being beaten, jerking at himself. Though it could be a story he’d made up for my benefit. My heart beat raggedly in my chest. No one knew where I was. I was entirely on my own. Was he going to hurt me like that, beat me or cut me? Or was all this just something to scare me with? I couldn’t show him I was afraid. I felt the moment like a knife edge in my teeth. Steady…
I came over to his chair. He leaned into me and sniffed me like an animal, my belly, my plume of red hair. It was repulsive and exciting. I was appalled at how dirty I was—how much there was to smell. It had been so long since I’d taken a real lie-down bath. He ran his finger between my legs, and I trembled,
repulsed and excited in equal measure. “Now open up for me.” He sprawled back on the chair, like a man in the theater. “I want to see you. Put your foot up here.” He patted the far arm of the chair.
I wanted him to see me. I was ashamed how aroused I was. Yet I didn’t have to confess this to anyone. If I made love with him, who would know? My love life was no one’s business—not Kolya’s, Genya’s, or anyone’s. I wanted to play this out, hoping he was just exciting himself with his talk of lashes and blood. Very possibly he was making it up—I wouldn’t put it past him. I lifted my foot up on the arm of the chair and spread myself so he could see me, the silky insides, the peaks and folds.
The way his eyes almost closed, like a man fighting sleep. Oh, he liked it all right. “It’s so pale. The color of your nipples. I wonder if it will change.” Still, he did not touch me, only himself. “Finger yourself for me. Yes. Just like I wasn’t here.”
I slowly drew my fingers along my folds, and his eyes narrowed. He wet his wide mouth with his tongue. It was disgusting and exciting. Trollop. Jade.
“You’re so lonely,” he began. “Your lover’s in Paris, or God knows where, out banging the help. A maid—no, a little actress he found, in some cheap revue in the Place Pigalle.” His low hypnotic voice painted the scene. “You’re in your room. Your mother and the old baba have gone to sleep. Your little boyfriend’s left you there all alone. You’re a passionate girl, and you haven’t had a man in a long time.”
God knew that was true. Though I would never have dreamed of touching myself in the room with Mother and Avdokia. Between the two of them, they could chill desire in the most confirmed libertine. Yet this was the Archangel’s fantasy, and I was prepared to go along, see where it took me.