Marusya. It meant bitter. Yes, that was her name. She allowed them to baptize her like Achilles in the black waters of the Styx. Leaving only the heel. She wondered what that would prove to be. But for the rest, sealed in darkness, Marusya be her name.
Thus the girl, the visitor, the vagabond, scarred and renounced, stepped away from all that she had been. Left herself behind like a glove dropped in a train station. What she found was—silence. She wrapped it around herself like an Orenburg wedding-ring shawl. So light, so soft, so warm. Her life now could pass through a wedding ring.
Marusya woke early. Collected their firewood, breaking it from branches before she found a few precious tools still left in the shed—the empty pegs evidence of a larger store, vanished now. To the credit of the thieves, or someone else’s foresight, the departing gardeners or Red Guards hadn’t stolen everything. A couple of spades and hoes hung scattered, a rusty saw, a hatchet, an ax, a large hammer, and a wedge. Most important, the observatory’s well was good and deep, the water blessedly clean—it didn’t have to be boiled to drink! She could not imagine such luxury. She washed their clothes, took their ration cards down to the village, and walked the mile back up, their food on her back, bread and potatoes and herring, deflecting the prying of the housewives with shrugs. She did everything she could to justify her presence there, ate as little as possible.
The place had been terribly neglected. The servants and most of their colleagues had left after October’s battle on the Pulkovo Heights. The rest left when Bolshevik miracles failed to manifest themselves. The girl swept and scrubbed, sewed underwear, darned socks, boiled sheets, dragged bedding out to the yard, hung the quilts and beat and beat them. The dust could have spawned a new galaxy.
The days warmed, and one by one she seated the Ancients outside in the new wildflowers and washed and trimmed their hair and their beards to their specifications—the First liked his in the style of the tsar, of medium length and gently rounded at the bottom. The Second favored his double ax heads. The Third liked his hair trimmed short, but shaved himself. The Fourth was so ancient that his beard was spare and wiry, like a goat’s, but he would permit only half an inch of trimming. Soft old hair, light as dandelion floss in her fingers. The starushka, Ludmila Vasilievna, practically wept with pleasure as the girl washed her hair in the yard and combed it and let it dry in the sun, then brushed and braided it for her. Their mute servant cut their hornlike toenails with a pair of scissors the First Ancient kept in a leather case only slightly older than the moon. The girl saw many things they could have sold to make their lives more bearable, but it never occurred to them. In many ways, she felt these Ancients were her children, and she their young mother.
They gathered at moonrise like moths. The Third had made yellow dandelion wine they enjoyed before the evening meal. Marusya served them sorrel soup and spring onions and rationed bread and fed upon their learned conversations as they ate in measured bites, drank their thin soup. They spoke of colleagues in far-flung universities, at Freiburg and Berlin, at Greenwich and Cambridge, of discoveries in mathematics and physics and chemistry. They bemoaned the lack of contemporary publications. “When this is over,” said the First, “we’re going to be as antique as knee britches.” They made jokes about former students. Marusya remained quiet, alert, unobtrusive, and as adoring as a good German shepherd. She would have killed for them, she would have laid down her life.
They explained to her over their yellow wine that there had been scores of astronomers and other staff members living here before the revolution, but alas—sighs all around—the younger people preferred life “down below,” where they could continue their careers at the university. “Their wives and children hated the isolation,” said the Second, Boris Osipovich, “when travel became difficult—”
“Impossible,” said the Fourth, Valentin Vladimirovich, in his high, cracked, crabby voice. “Who could go back and forth five times a week? We used to have an automobile—remember that?”
“We had to choose,” said the First, Aristarkh Apollonovich, the director of the observatory. “The university or this.” He sipped his yellow wine, stroked his moustache. “Most chose to stay in Petrograd with their students and continue teaching. Only we stariki preferred our researches, though it wasn’t the easiest choice.”
“It was for me,” said Ludmila Vasilievna. “It’s too awful down there now.”
Marusya nodded her agreement.
The girl fell into the rhythm of the observatory. She liked it best when Aristarkh Apollonovich permitted her to climb the metal stairs with him and gaze upon some spectacle of the cosmos. The double star in the constellation Ursa Major, which the great Arab astronomers called the Horse and Rider. The Moving Group of stars in the Big Dipper—her silent tongue ran over the shapes of their names: Alioth, Mizar, Merak, Phad, Megrez, Alcor—like a stable of Arabian stallions…all moving together toward Sagittarius. Which showed that this constellation was not, like most, a mere appearance—stars superimposed in the same sector of the sky—they were in fact related. A family, born together around three hundred million years ago. The girl so loved to hear numbers like that, to contemplate the vast age of the universe. It somehow made life on earth seem less desperate.
This old man had been at Pulkovo Observatory for years. His specialty, the fingerprints of the stars: spectra and motion. He trained the telescope on great Jupiter and the glowing rings of Saturn. “See those rings? They don’t turn like a phonograph recording,” he said, spreading his fingers and rotating his hand. “Each ring moves at a different rate. This indicates they’re made of a flow of small objects. We discovered that here.” He stroked the wing of his moustache in a way that made her realize it was he who had made the discovery. This very man, the First, who gave her a guided tour of the seas and mountains of the moon, who showed her rising Venus and red Mars.
Sometimes he told her of his wife, who had died, and his son and grandchildren, who lived in Brazil—a distance more than light-years away now.
Ludmila Vasilievna continued to be her favorite. She brushed the old woman’s hair out every day and helped her into her bed after a long night’s cataloguing of the stars. She massaged her old feet and hands, which tended to arthritis, and brought her a cup of chamomile tea so that she would sleep soundly through the morning.
But soon Marusya discovered that the Third Ancient, Nikolai Gerasimovich, was to be her main charge. He was the one who actually needed an assistant in his work. A physicist and chemist who specialized in the composition of atmospheres, he was a passionate astrobotanist. She had never heard of such a thing. What plants could there possibly be in space? “When we travel, it’s not going to be a day trip to Novgorod, Marusya,” he explained, interpreting her quizzical expression. “We’ll have to take them with us. They’ll help us breathe, and feed us, and filter the air. And when we land, we’ll have to have something to start with, won’t we?”
She almost wept. This learned man really thought they were going to the stars. It had never occurred to her how optimistic scientists were. He spoke as if he would be on those ships himself, heading out into the cosmos, though he must have known that he would likely not live to see even the return of hot water. She followed him around like a little dog as he gave elaborate instructions on how to tend his plants—if you could call them that. Most weren’t even plants, just lichens and mosses and foul-smelling algae growing in washtubs.
Marusya could only imagine what a certain Petrograd speculator would say about this childlike fascination with mucky goo. “The Aztecs grew this very same algae centuries before Columbus,” said Nikolai Gerasimovich. “It’s the fastest-growing protein source on earth. They grew it on vast lakes, dried it in blocks, and ate it when food was scarce.” He gave her a chip off a cake. “Try it.” Without hesitating, she bit into it. It tasted like dirt and pond scum, but no worse than the dried deer pellets she’d eaten as a child, thinking them candies. She chewed and swallowed it nevertheless, not wanting to spit it out, sin
ce he was so proud of it. “Good?” She nodded. He laughed and ate some as well, chewing it up. “You’d do well to get used to it. We might have to eat this next winter if rations continue to erode and the garden proves insufficient. If only we had better laboratories…I’m working with simulations of various atmospheres—ammonia, sulfur. So much knowledge has been lost about the medicinal and nutritional value of substances we would never consider as food sources. Insects, for example.”
She glanced over at his screen-covered terrariums hopping with beetles, and realized in horror that he was growing them as food. He laughed when he saw her face. “They’re not bad, really. I learned to eat them in Java. They multiply at a wonderful rate in warmth and damp. The latter we already have, but the former…” He seemed positively nostalgic about entomological cuisine. Professor Nikolai Gerasimovich Pomogayush…Marusya wondered, if she had met him at a party in the capital of Once-Had-Been instead of at the Pulkovo Observatory, would she have thought him venerable or mad? “These insects, this algae, lichen, and fungus—this is most likely the fodder that will take us to the stars, my dear. Not asparagus and beefsteak.”
To the stars, that was the important thing here. This was what they thought about day and night: what lay beyond. They wanted to catch the stars in their beds, know how they danced, what held them and what forced them to blow apart. Stars in their matrix—how hot, how cold, how far, how old. They wondered about the sense of it all, the physical laws that weren’t opinion, that weren’t voted upon. There were no commissars here.
Every so often, the Third asked about Marusya’s past, what had brought her here that night in early spring. Whether she had ever spoken, if she had always been mute. But she simply ignored the questions. “You’ve had an education, though, haven’t you? You understand what we say. Every word, I’d wager. What happened to you?” But a shrug was the only reply he would get for his trouble.
They were lucky to have Nikolai Gerasimovich. Unlike the more theoretical physicists and mathematicians, he understood the needs of poor earth-bound bodies. He showed her the seeds he’d saved—cucumber and carrot, dill, onion sets and beets and even some seed potatoes in sand. He proudly showed her where his currant bushes and raspberries grew—their green buds had already begun to swell. He was the one who’d given Ludmila Vasilievna an herbal ointment for Marusya’s wounds. He showed her how to plant seeds in flats indoors and keep them watered under glass.
Now her silence had become a shimmering sari. It was both beautiful and comforting not to have to reply to people when they spoke to her. It energized her, left her with hands and actions alone. She would not have to lie if she didn’t speak, she would not have to explain or confess. How simple life was that way. Everything that was inside her stayed inside. Nothing spilled out. She realized how much of herself she normally leaked away, gave away to anyone and everyone. Now she listened, companionably, and worked. There was a poetry in it.
When it grew warm enough, she took their seedlings outside to bask in the lengthening days. Under the demanding eye of the Third, she dug the garden. It would be a big one. She didn’t like it when he tried to work alongside her. What if he had a heart attack? A stroke? She preferred it when he sat in the shade and explained about the varying atmospheres on other planets while she did the bulk of the digging.
Silence rinsed her bitter soul as clear as their well water, silence and starlight. The garden began to grow. The observatory stood above the plain, untouched as a holy city in a lake, and she lived safely at the secret heart of her own Svetloyar, and cared for her five beloveds.
53 The Clinic in the Trees
IN ANY EARTHLY IDYLL, time and events will inevitably intrude, and so they did, in the form of a young astronomer and his family: a wife, a pretty but ill-looking blonde, and two children, a girl of seven, a boy, maybe five, his round head shaved against lice. The astronomer carried the boy to the house of the stars. Marusya met them at the door. “I’m Mistropovich. Rodion Karlovich,” he said, hoisting his son higher on his shoulder, that round head lolling. “I used to work here. Are they still here—Aristarkh Apollonovich? Nikolai Gerasimovich?”
The way the woman looked—dull-eyed—frightened Marusya. She thought of the Five, the Ancients, how frail they were. She was afraid of these new people. Not for herself but for her charges. Nothing must harm them. Not these visitors. She felt as protective as any peasant nanny as she stood in the doorway, barring their path.
“Please,” he said. “Just tell Aristarkh Apollonovich I’m here.”
Reluctantly, Marusya stepped back and allowed them to enter the great hall, showing them to a bench, indicating with her hand for them to wait there. “Water,” the woman said, “for the love of God.”
It was late in the day. The Five were already gathering in the salon for the evening’s cordials. How could she tell them, Beware, beware! She went to Pomogayush, caught his sleeve. “What is it, Marusya? What’s happened?”
She mimed the knock on the door. Showed the number four on her fingers. Their heights, small, medium and tall. And that two of them were ill—lines under their eyes for the dark circles. He rose with alacrity. “Somebody’s here. Something’s wrong.” And the others followed him into the hall. She tried to slow the others, waving them off, tugging at Ludmila Vasilievna’s sleeve, but they wouldn’t heed her.
“Mistropovich!” the Third shouted. And then they were out of Marusya’s hands, running to the strangers, embracing them, O Holy Theotokos! Bringing them into their parlor! The woman collapsed onto the sofa, the boy by her side. The gray-eyed daughter looked at Marusya curiously.
“I’m so sorry.” The man was weeping. “I just didn’t know where else to go.” They patted him and made conciliatory sounds, even Marusya could see how they loved him. He took the elders to one side and explained something to them very quietly but she could see his panic, their solicitous concern.
“Of course you should have come, of course,” said the First.
“We would have expected nothing less,” said the Second.
“Marusya, bring them some water,” said Ludmila Vasilievna.
The sick woman and her sick son terrified her. She wanted to throw them into the yard and bar the door, but she did what she was told and dashed to the kitchen to bring them their water.
The Third met her in the hall, as she was returning with a pitcher and glasses. “Marusya, listen to me. It’s cholera. Do you understand what that is?”
Cholera! Why in God’s name had they come here with it?
“There’s an epidemic in Petrograd. They were lucky to get here.”
The water. Cholera was transmitted in water. Sanitation in Petrograd had all but vanished. The plumbing was broken, people had been using the courtyards as latrines all winter, and then with the spring melt…oh God. The drinking water came right out of the canals, and water ran just inches below street level. Dead horses, garbage, no soap, people shitting everywhere, then pumping the same water. Everyone was in danger. The whole city could be infected by now. How many people—a thousand? Ten thousand? She did not want to think of the horror unfolding in the capital of Once-Had-Been. But what about the Five?
“They’re all right for now. It’s only contagious through contact with bodily fluids,” said the Third. “Not breathing or touching them. Understand? It’s the dehydration that kills them. They need water, and we will have to keep everything perfectly clean, especially our hands. Their wastes need to be sequestered—away from the water and the vegetable garden. God knows what must be going on down in the city. Are you ready for this?”
She nodded vigorously. She wanted them out of the observatory, silently begged with tugs and gestures for the Third to let her bring them out of doors. She led him to the spot where she often slept, in a pleasant grove of trees, away from the well, away from the garden. He concurred, and the rest agreed. They brought cots into the clearing. The husband washed and gave the boy water with salt, while Marusya helped the wife hold her cup,
dipped the precious liquid between her chapped lips. “I’m so sorry,” the father kept saying. “People are dying in the streets—you can’t imagine. The hospitals are no better than giant latrines.”
Each patient was assigned a bucket and a pillow. The husband dug a pit for their waste and lined it with pine boughs. He held the wife’s hand, stroked the son’s shaved head. “Don’t be frightened of the girl. Her name is Marusya. She’ll be your nurse while you’re so sick.”
“I don’t like her,” the little boy said. “Don’t leave, Papa.”
“I have to. I have work to do, and someone has to look after Katinka. But Mama’s here, and Marusya will take care of you. She doesn’t speak, but she can hear.”
The boy started to cry, and the mother, who was also weak, reached across from her cot and held his hand. “Where’s my brave little boy?” And Marusya remembered another little boy, how scared he was whenever he was ill. She found it hard to be angry with these people for their illness. Now that they were in the pines and not in the observatory, she could find her pity again.
Within hours, their symptoms worsened. They trembled, they vomited. Marina would have been disgusted and helpless with pity, but Marusya stoically supported them to the pit, where they shat so loosely that it might have been urine. She wiped them on pages of a thick German astronomical journal, then washed her own hands in water she kept boiling over a fire pit the husband had dug and filled with wood. The wind was sweet in the pines, but she had never seen such sick people. She washed their hands and her own until they puckered. The Third Ancient brought a host of supplies to her clinic in the trees—a glass straw for each of them so dirty fingers wouldn’t reinfect the water as they drank. He brought her a little bottle of chlorine to add to the patients’ drinking water, just in case.
“This is food for you,” he said, giving her a packet in paper. “Don’t touch it with your hands, if you can avoid it. Just to be safe.” He tucked a fork and a knife in her pocket, wrapped in a napkin, then gave her a rag and a stack of towels. “Don’t touch anything with your hands. Wrap your hands when you use the pump.”