“Your friends have all gone abroad, leaving you here, your beautiful youth fading away in that collectivized flat. Night after night, you sit with that dried-up grande dame. Who would blame you for touching yourself, trying for a little pleasure? At night you sometimes leave the shades open—yes you do. I’ve seen you.”
I could imagine it, the shades open…though no one could see—we were on the second floor. I’d have to hang myself out the window. Easier to imagine a ground-floor window…
“Just in case someone comes along, some lonely man out walking. And there is someone. You’ve seen him in the street. He waits for you when you come home at night. He’s waiting, he watches your windows. You feel him there, don’t you?”
“Is it you?” I murmured. “Are you watching me, Arkady?”
He sighed heavily. “Your mother and that old baba are snoring away, safely tucked up in their beds, and you stand at the window. You’re naked, so lovely, so yearning. You touch yourself, and he watches you, and you move together, you and this stranger.”
We moved together, there in the room, separate and yet together in this fantasy. I rubbed myself, tracing the slickness, letting his voice take me into the moment. It was an insistent, rumbling throaty whisper that I rode. I wanted him to keep talking, telling me the story of the man in the dark. My eyes were closed but I could hear him panting, slapping away at himself as I teased my body into orgasm. I buckled forward as the sweet waves of sensation moved through me.
Suddenly he was no longer sagging in the chair with a view of me. He was up on his feet, lifting me by the waist, and he shoved me, kneeling, onto the couch. I threw my arms up so I wouldn’t hit the wall with my head, but my forehead struck as he jammed himself into me from behind. I twisted to find a position where he couldn’t ram himself up painfully against my womb, but he kept moving me back so he could get it all in. “You’re so little—who would have thought?”
But I wasn’t that little. Genya and I made love and it wasn’t like this. Arkady knew exactly what he was doing. He either wanted to hurt me or didn’t care. I screamed.
“My big dick—is it too much for you?” he whispered in my ear, bent over me. He twisted my nipple, hard. “Yes, I’m hurting you?”
I gritted my teeth so I wouldn’t cry out again, he seemed to enjoy that he was hurting me. I would not add to his pleasure in it. I held my arms before my head so I wouldn’t knock myself out hitting the wall. “Get off…let me go.”
He slapped my ass, hard, like a horse. “Tell me how it hurts. Tell me, or I’ll keep it up all night. Tell me how you like my steel.”
I braced my forehead against my arms. “Why are you doing this?” I choked out.
“So your boyfriend Kolya’ll feel it when he fucks you,” he said, close by my ear, petting my hair. “He’ll know you’ve been fucked by a real man. How do you like fucking a real man?” He grabbed my hair and plowed all the way into me and a scream rose from my guts into the room and my head hit the wall again. Would he never stop? He twisted my nipple like he was trying to pull it off. “Tell me.”
But I could not say it. I could only cry as he scoured me raw as a sandpapered plank. When would he come? What would make him finally stop? It wasn’t the sound of my sobs—that was clear. Would he just keep going forever? I was dry as a piece of toast, and he kept going. I was cramping with pain. What a fool. This was what he really wanted. All that sexy talk was just one more thing he could take away from me.
“Does your Kolya have you like this? Do you feel him in your lungs, in your throat when he fucks you?”
Was that it, to erase Kolya from my body? Who was the fool here? Only pleasure erased pleasure, Arkady. I must be bleeding now. He was never going to come.
Finally he pulled out and sagged onto the couch next to me, both of us puffing and panting, his pants around his ankles, his cock stark white like a radish. He needed a mare, a camel. He was puffing, stroking himself. I hoped he’d have a heart attack. “Put your finger up my ass, Makarova.”
I’d never heard of such a thing.
“Do it,” he said. He kicked his pants off and knelt there, pumping.
Trying not to look, I fingered the puckered orifice.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “Stick that thing in before I pop.”
I pressed, just to the first knuckle. And he groaned, and I could feel him contracting around my digit, such an odd feeling. It must be the way a man felt inside me, the slick walls of muscle gripping him. Well, it was far better than what had preceded it. Finally he made a sound like he was having that infarction he richly deserved when he grabbed my head like a cabbage and forced it down onto him, spearing me in the mouth, up into my throat. I gagged as his hot, sour semen streamed into me. I couldn’t breathe, even through my nose, and I struggled to pull away—pushed against his thighs, scratched at his chest, tried to find his face, bite down but my jaws were locked open. He held me and held me as he released into my throat, then finally he let me go.
I flung myself away from him, coughing and gasping, sagged to the floor, spitting, tasting him, smelling him. I scrabbled back against the wall, as far from him as I could.
He picked up my slip from the floor, wiped himself and threw it to me. “You’ll get used to me. That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
I wiped my finger on the Louis chair. My throat was as raw as my vagina now. I inched the slip over my head, covering the pale sore nipples that he found so exotic, the wet patches on my crumpled chemise. The sordid remains of adventure. “At least let me have my bracelet back.”
Arkady stretched and yawned on the daybed and pulled his pants back on, though he left his cock out to air. He’d had a fine time. He looked ten years younger. “No, I have something else in mind for it.” He took the enameled bangle from his pocket, twirled it on a long forefinger. “I’m going to bring your young Nikolai home for you. Your little mischief maker. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? A little gift for your trouble?”
“Was that what this whole evening’s been about? Kolya?” The romantic dinner, the brutal sex, everything? It had never been about me at all. I had been so sure there’d been an undercurrent of desire. But I was only a tool.
Arkady made that horrible moue. “Oh, Makarova. It doesn’t diminish our love, does it?” He buttoned that monster back into his pants like an eel returning to its hole. “It just makes it more interesting.”
“He won’t come,” I said defiantly. I reached out warily for my dress, dragged it toward where I sat, oozing onto the floorboards. Blood? Yes. Bastard. He was counting on Kolya’s love for me, his loyalty. I have your woman. Come back if you want her. Before I flog her, cut her in tiny pieces, and feed her to the geese. And what would he do to Kolya if he returned? How perfectly I had played into Arkady’s hands. “He’ll never come back,” I spat. “He doesn’t love me like that.”
“You should hope he does,” Arkady said.
I dressed as quickly as I could, half doubled over from the cramping, imagining Kolya dashing into the trap. I prayed he would not. I could only imagine what Arkady might do to him. Yet a small part of myself, a selfish, vain part, could not help wishing he would come for me, would be willing to risk even death for me.
The tall, spectral man put on his coat and hat, and I put on my own, snatching it and moving away from him, still unwilling to get within arm’s reach. The speed with which he had turned on me was indelibly imprinted on my body. Arkady von Princip was dangerous at all times, not only when he appeared to be. He started through the door, glancing over his shoulder. “Sorry. Didn’t I mention? You’re not going anywhere.”
He closed the door and locked it behind him.
49 Captivity
I DREAMED THAT A crowd chased me through the streets of Petrograd. I turned and twisted to avoid their grasping, clutching hands, but there were too many. They got me down onto the ground in the filth of a market square and were peeling me with their knives as you’d peel summer fruit, starting w
ith my face as I screamed and twisted and tried to get away. Finally, they got my skin off in one piece and someone ran away with it. And they left me there blinded and bloody, a hunk of living meat. How could I go around Petrograd without a skin? People were so hungry these days.
I awoke, curled in a hot room, still in my clothes, covered with sweat. Thank God, I thought. I still had my skin.
Then I remembered where I was and why. My head thundered and my throat was parched, but I grabbed my coat, stuffed my feet into my cracked boots, and flew to the door.
Locked.
I battered at it with my fists, yelled to anyone listening to let me out. I couldn’t breathe. I pleaded to be set free, but no one came. The room stank of him, our sex, a miasma, disgusting and shameful.
The windows! I opened the drapes, but the windows wouldn’t give. Locked. No, I saw the blocks hammered into the wide sill. A prison. And I’d walked in on my own. Thinking I had a new lover. What a fool. I pulled the chair from the desk to the window and climbed up onto the sill, dislodging a geranium growing there. Dirt all over the floor. The smell of my wedding. Down in the street, I could see the enviable people, walking by under battered umbrellas. Rain blackened the trees. Oh to be out there, wet, hungry but free.…I opened the fortochka, I would have cried out, but I was afraid men in the outer room might hear me, stop me. I tore a piece from my slip, waved it. No good, who would look up into the rain? “Help!” I called out. Louder. “Help!” Still no one. I listened to hear anyone coming. No.
I tried the escritoire in the bookcase, lined with drawers and cubbyholes. Nothing dangerous, no letter opener, no penknife, but here was a pen, and a bottle of ink. I found a small notepad and wrote in block letters, HELP being held prisoner fourth floor COUNTERREVOLUTIONARIES March 30, 1918. GET HELP. Threw it out the window. Waved my white flag, now a wet rag. The sound of the rain erased my pleas.
The glass in the window was divided into squares, each too small for me to climb through but perhaps…I broke the first window, my coat over my hand. Listened. Nothing! I had to work quick. I broke out the second above it. Yes. The outer window opened, they had not thought to lock it. Now there just remained the matter of the crosspiece. Clinging to the wide wall of the recessed window, I lifted my foot in its boot—Put your boot in it!—and broke out the crosspiece. Waited for the sound of men running on the parquet outside the locked doors. I jumped down, dragged the Louis chair to the door and jammed it under the doorknob, then returned to my perch on the windowsill. Was I ready? I carefully brushed the glass away from the ledge. Holding on, I stuck my leg through, straddling the entire width of sill and window. Then ducked and got the rest of myself through. My head and shoulders, outside. My heart was pounding, my hands sweaty, the rain falling on my face.
But to my disappointment, there was no balcony, no ledge, no ornamentation one could balance upon. I waved my white flag. “Hey! Help!”
A child looked up. A child, across the street, tugged at his mother’s coat, pointed to the girl climbing from the window. The mother stopped, put her umbrella back, saw me. Other people stopped on the sidewalk and watched. “Help me!” I shouted, weeping, holding on to the inner window frame, praying it wouldn’t break. “They’ve got me locked in!”
But they just looked up dumbly. They thought I was a suicide.
“I NEED HELP!” I screamed.
Nobody moved. Then someone came running from this side of the building. Looked up, ran back in. “HELP ME!”
The drainspout. It ran down the building, past the next window. If I could stand, and make the big step to the next window, and then to the downspout, I just might be able to climb down. Or tie the curtains together and lower myself the four stories.…I heard the falling chair, but my position was too awkward to extricate myself quickly.
Suddenly, a heavy hand reached through the broken window and grabbed me by the hair, pulled me roughly inside, knocking me onto the floor. A blow to the face. It was the bearded man. “What do you think you’re doing, huh? Trying to escape?” Another blow. Openhanded, but his hands were like blocks of wood. I curled myself into a ball around the geranium, the dirt.
“Hey, hey, take it easy.” Another man, pockmarked, shoes wet. The one down in the street, the one who’d caught me.
“You take it easy, shithead.” The bearded man. “Where were you? You were supposed to be on watch.”
“I can’t watch everything,” said the other one. “She looks bad.”
“Get some boards. Fix that.” The bearded man bent over me, his gut straining his pants. “You. Stay away from those windows or I’ll pitch you out. Head first. Whee…” He showed me with his hands, flight, and then smack!, brought his two hands together. “Shoulda helped you out the rest of the way, would have solved the woman problem right then and there.” He turned to the other man. “I told him you can’t mix women with business.”
“You told him that,” the other man said skeptically.
“In my way,” said the bearded man.
My hair hurt, my face was bleeding, scratched where it had been pulled past the window frame. My cheek throbbed where he’d hit me. “I didn’t choose to be here,” I said.
“Shut up,” said the bearded man, lifting his backhand, then thinking twice about it. “Stay out of my hair or I’ll cut your throat just to get rid of you.”
He waited for the other man to return with boards and a tool box, watched him board up the broken panes. My head still rang from the blows, I could feel the swelling coming on already.
“Could I have some water?” I asked.
“You get nothing, bitch,” said the bearded man, and slammed the door, turned the lock hard.
At least the fortochka opened. I breathed the cold freshness of the rain. I could see the trees across the way in the Tauride Gardens, their black limbs studded with new buds. I wept like a child reaching my hand out to touch the rain, licking it off my palm. So close, those gardens, the trees I’d climbed as a child. That I made Seryozha climb, though he was afraid. I should have been more afraid, and he less. Among them lay the pond we pretended was Lake Svetloyar. Avdokia would tell us the story: Zhili-buili, once upon a time, a prince built a city without walls on the banks of Lake Svetloyar…. Nothing seemed as precious now as the black pond that concealed the holy city, guarded forever against the Great Khan when it sank beneath the lake. And upon the midnight, if you are pure at heart, if you are faithful, you can hear the bells of Kitezh ring out from beneath the waters.
I waited all morning for someone to arrive with water or breakfast, a knout or a gun, but no one came. I examined the room’s two dull landscapes and a portrait in a slightly cubist style. I took the latter off the wall and threw it against the door, enjoying its smash and screaming in frustration, waiting for the man to come back and hit me again, but the door remained shut.
Surely someone in the building must have heard me. But most likely Arkady had them all terrorized. He was probably paying off the house committee, too. It could even be that the residents felt safer with him around. And got electricity at night. I stood by the window, watching the rain and rehearsing my sins.
Was it raining in Moscow? I imagined Genya making his kinofilms. Genya whom I had let slip through my fingers—how had I not clung to him in the station, sworn not to let him go? If I ever got out of this room, I would go and live with him in Moscow—Zina, too. I didn’t care anymore. A city in which Arkady von Princip drew breath was cursed down to its cobblestones.
Or I could go Maryino. I was no barynya anymore—I knew how to work. I could walk cows to pasture, cut rye, saw wood, make shoes. You could vanish like that. Safe under the waters.
I sat down in the blue empire chair and searched the escritoire again to see if there was anything I could use, something I’d missed, but the little drawers and cubbies held nothing but old letters and ticket stubs. Not even a hat pin. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way that man had used me, like a cow or a horse.
It all came b
ack to Kolya. When I thought of him, my heart didn’t jump as it had even the day before. This was his fault, in more ways than one. Not only had he given me the jewel and told me to see Arkady if I needed to sell it. No. He had introduced me to my own boundless passion, the possibilities of the flesh, had left me wide open to this kind of seduction. That’s what made me want to retch with self-loathing. I tried to think back to our good times, the sleigh ride, snow on the Catherine Canal, but that cruel parody of love with Arkady had erased it.
I used the chamber pot. The pain made me grit my teeth. No paper to wipe with, only dusty copies of the old journal Severny Vestnik from the bookcase. I ripped out a sheet—a poem by Sologub—and gently blotted my torn flesh. No blood on the paper, that was good news. My vulva would be very well read. I started to laugh. Of course, love was the poem’s subject.
Later in the day, I heard a key turn in the lock and my heart spun like a tumbler. But it was only the Kirghiz, impassive, wrinkles deeply etched, a basket in one hand, a pitcher in the other. He glanced at my battered face, the boarded-up window.
I ran to him, clutching his arm. “Get me out of here,” I whispered. “I beg you. I’ll give you four thousand rubles. You know I’m good for it.”
He shook his head, grinned. His teeth were dark from tobacco, ground to stumps. “He likes you, little bird,” he said. “Imagine what he’d do to someone he didn’t like.”
I slumped in the chair. “Will he ever let me go?”
The man shrugged, setting the basket on the desk, the pitcher alongside it. “The Archangel holds our fate in his hands.”
In the basket, an egg. A loaf of good bread, a sausage. Like a love letter from a hangman.
The room measured ten paces by four. I spent the day pacing it off, or gazing out at the Tauride Gardens, and avoiding the daybed and the Louis chair. I knew their treachery. The chair stared back at me, blank as a babe. The hypocrisy of furniture. I sat at the escritoire and read all the family’s correspondence. Old letters from Moscow and Tsarskoe Selo, a postcard of the harbor at Novorossisk, to the Dearest Mustasovs, from Elena…a stack of overdue bills. The Dearest Mustasovs were evidently behind on payments to the butcher, the florist, the stationer. Maybe they were relieved that the revolution wiped out all their debts. In fleeing they could leave those problems behind.