“We never had her.” She wiped her mouth, took a sip of tea. “She disappeared when all this broke out. Maybe she’s clairvoyant after all, eh? Or else she’s learned a thing or two from last time. When we stopped by, both she and the old lady had already flown the coop. Feel better?” She chucked me under the chin as you do a sulky child.
“And Karlinskaya?” I knew I shouldn’t ask.
She sighed. “You’re worried about that bitch? She sang like a bird, if you want to know. She saw what was up the minute we called her in.”
“Did you…” I swallowed past an imaginary bolus of wax. “Torture her?”
“I never torture anyone,” she said, and held my hand in both of hers. “I simply give them choices. Karlinskaya believes in the revolution. It wasn’t hard to convince her to help us. I let her go this afternoon. She’s off to work for us now. You’ve done the revolution a service.”
Which of us would be the Bolshevik spy now? I thought bitterly. “Do you swear?”
“On Marx’s beard. Whatever else you think of me, I’m no liar.” She let that hang in the air, with its unspoken rebuke. “We knew most of it already, thanks to you. I told her I’d put her on a train to Samara if she told me what I wanted to know, and she was ready to oblige. She’s not the hard-liner you’d have thought. A practical woman, I’d say. More so than you.”
As we ate, Varvara delineated the conspiracy they’d partially uncovered at the time of Lenin’s assassination attempt, which my information further revealed. It seemed that a British diplomat had been caught bribing the Latvian Rifles—Lenin’s personal guard—to kill both Lenin and Trotsky. Dzerzhinsky, the Torquemada of the national Cheka—he of the gaunt face and the pointed beard in the portrait in Varvara’s office—had been on the hunt for others involved. Evidently Karlinsky was the conduit.
She went to her bag, pulled out a photograph, and put it by my plate. “Look familiar?”
It showed a dark-haired man with round, sad eyes and drooping moustache in an old-fashioned high white collar and soft tie. It was him, the Odessan, years ago. I nodded.
“Konstantin. Recruited by the British in 1903 in the Pacific before the Japanese war. The one in the uniform you described is a naval attaché, Commander Fielding Brown. Your meeting was preparation for the invasion of Russia by the English—and the Czech uprising on the Trans-Siberian. The plan was to meet up with the Czechs and eventually the Whites under Denikin, to attack Moscow. Karlinskaya confirmed what we knew. Added a few details.”
“And Father?”
She picked a fish bone out of her mouth and set it on the rim of her plate. “He’s in Samara, with Komuch.”
A new acronym, no doubt. “Translation, please.”
“The Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly—the old Kerensky gang mostly, plus some other assorted malcontents like your old man. For some reason, Karlinskaya stayed behind in Petrograd. She said it was because she’d “been ill,” but later admitted she’d been knocked up and needed an abortion. Quite a woman. We picked her up in a random sweep. No idea who she was. Berzhins almost wept—you should have seen his face.”
So Arkady hadn’t been lying. I could have had another sister or brother. Thank God she’d put an end to that.
She sat back in her chair, propped her knee against the oilcloth. “We did find out how they got the gold in for the Czechs. In case you were wondering.”
I forced myself to meet her gaze. She would notice if I looked away. She would notice anyway, but I had to try. “How?”
She spun her spoon around. “Surprise, surprise. Your old pal Shurov. Neck deep in it. A strange coincidence, don’t you think? Want to change your story?”
I tried to imagine how an innocent person would react. Exasperated. “I can’t imagine anyone, let alone Arkady, trusting him with a load of gold.”
She stared at me another moment, then gathered up the dishes. Nobody washed them anymore—we licked them clean. “And you didn’t know anything about it.”
I shook my head, a piece of herring bone stuck in my teeth.
“He never contacted you? Do you know where he is now?” Her black eyebrows arched to disbelieving peaks. She set the dishes on the windowsill.
“Is the interrogation still on?”
I could hear the rain gargling in the drainpipe outside. “Your father, Arkady, Shurov. Konstantin and Commander Brown? You swear you had no part in it?” Her nail-bitten hand suddenly grasped my forearm. “If you’re playing me for a fool, I’ll shoot you myself.” Her eyes glared like sun on metal. It hurt to look back into them. “Think before you answer.”
“I gave you Karlinskaya, didn’t I?” She loved me but I had no doubt she would shoot me if she thought I had turned against the revolution. She would shoot me to prove to herself that she valued the revolution over her personal feelings, even love. “I told you everything.”
She drew her face even closer. Her hair smelled of smoke. “Tell me about Shurov.” Was this politics or jealousy?
I gazed right into her black, frightening eyes. “I haven’t seen him since the last day on Galernaya. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing.” The absolute almost truth.
“Too many coincidences. I don’t like it.” Varvara pursed her lips so hard, her wide mouth nearly disappeared.
“After what he did, setting me up with von Princip? You think I’d forgive him for that?” She was making me angry all over again.
She sighed and lowered herself back into her seat. “All right. We won’t speak of it again.” She lit the primus with a twist of paper, set the kettle on to boil. I tried not to cough. That bone was sticking in my throat. She prepared the tea, with something that looked like real tea. A sad celebration. The smell uncoiled in the room. We waited for it to brew and rearranged our faces.
She rolled a cigarette and put her stockinged foot up on the table. Her heel had a huge hole in it. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you. There are going to be massive celebrations for the October anniversary,” she said. “In honor of Year One. The futurists are knocking themselves out. They’re preparing theatricals, parades, puppet shows. They’re redesigning Palace Square. You should do something with them.”
“Funny, I don’t feel much like celebrating.” Just as I watched our dreams fall under the horses, they were staging a parade. There was no bread, but it seems there would be circuses. Still, hope was as real as bread and more easily constructed from papier-mâché, wire, and broadsides.
“This will be over soon,” she said, meaning Red Terror, “and then it will be Petrograd’s chance to live a little—remind people what it’s all about. The Commissariat of Enlightenment’s somehow twisted the money out of Moscow. There’s a ton of work. You should write a poem for the celebrations—it’ll reinforce your revolutionary credentials. I’m sure there’ll be readings. Some of your poets must still be around.”
But you had to have a soul to write, and I wasn’t sure I had one anymore. Maybe it was with Arkady’s now, inside an egg inside a duck inside a hare, at the bottom of the sea.
Varvara’s rations didn’t include enough firewood to warm the room past nine. We lay together under a pile of blankets. She held her manuscript on her knees, correcting pages. I had nothing to read, didn’t dare open a newspaper to hear the shrieking of the dead. Instead I was writing a poem—about the Year One—on the back of a discarded page. She smelled of smoke and pencil lead. “You know, I’ve missed you, you idiot.” She rubbed my shoulder awkwardly. “It was hell to see you in that room. That’s not how I like to see you.”
And how do you like to see me? I resisted asking the question, which would sound flirtatious. I could not shake the image of her in the interrogation room, her expert hand under my armpit leading me out of the cellar, her working in that hellish place every day. She was writing about it even now, urging people to have less heart so they could get through this insanity.
She brushed a hair from my cheek. Smiled.
I fought the
impulse to push her hand away.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.
To this rangy, dangerous girl I owed my life, and that of the astronomers, and probably Mother’s, too, indirectly. She and Avdokia would have waited for the Cheka like geese on a pond if not for Varvara’s lesson of last winter: when you smell trouble, make yourself scarce.
“I worried about you every day.” So close in my ear. She put her papers down, her arm across my shoulders. “I thought you were dead. I went looking for you. Anton said you were with your mother, but by then she was gone. Couldn’t you have sent me a note? Things could have turned out so differently…” She plucked at the ends of my hair, traced my nose, my lips.
I turned over the page I’d been working on. “I needed to disappear. For my own sanity.”
“All those months, I thought…then they said someone had been arrested in Pulkovo and had mentioned my name.”
She brought her face close, studied me, kissed my temple hesitantly. She shivered. Her eyes searched mine. Would I? That drain, the blood. Another room of the nightmare. Her body’s pungent smell, a higher acid smell than a man’s. Even if I’d been a lesbian I wouldn’t have been excited by her. I’d rather have made love to Manya. But I pitied her, and I owed her my life. I knew how long she had been carrying this burden. I knew what it was to love hopelessly.
“Please?” she whispered.
I couldn’t see what it mattered now, after those twisted nights with Arkady. I leaned across her to turn off the lamp.
“No,” she said. “Leave it on. I want to see you. I want to know this is real.”
Timidly, she began to make love to me. Her nervous hands explored my breasts, tentatively caressed my hips. How little experience she must have had. I was sure Manya had been her first. It was unreal having my old friend embrace me and feeling her growing excitement, the catch in her breath, the sensation of soft breasts against my own instead of a man’s hard chest. Her awkward touch, her keenness, was unbearable. There wasn’t even any vodka to make things any easier. She had no gift for lovemaking.
I showed her how. Kiss my throat, running my fingers down it. Offering her the nape of my neck. Kiss my neck, bite it. Using my hand over hers to cup my breast. Like this. My body warming now. I imagined Kolya watching us, sitting open-legged in a chair, his breath speeding up. I ran her hand up my haunch, over my hip, down my thigh. Here. Here. She kissed my mouth, my breast—not biting or twisting the nipple—my belly, and buried her face between my legs. I hoped I wouldn’t have to reciprocate. But how Kolya would adore this. It was easier, imagining him here as our third.
I moved her with my thighs and hands to a better sensation. What I would give for his clever cock now, his hands, his mouth. Thinking about his pleasure, my gleeful fox. Would I ever see him again?
She did not let me go until she felt the arch and ripple of my climax. Then, face smelling of me, she wrapped her legs around mine and rocked herself to completion. I’d never thought of doing that. “Marina, Marina…I’ve always loved you,” she whispered, nestling her chin on my shoulder, her tears dripping on my skin. “Did you know?”
I nodded. Yes, of course I knew. For that reason, the power in our friendship had always tilted a bit in my direction. What I hadn’t foreseen was the day I would lose my sense of what I’d never do, of what was impossible. Nothing was impossible and anything could happen. In the right situation, you could sleep with your best friend, you could turn over your father’s mistress to the drain.
“I’m so happy. You can’t know.” Finally, she turned off the lamp and settled under the blankets to sleep, her leg flung across me.
I tried to get some sleep myself, but her leg was heavy and I was hot and the sheets reeked of her. I pretended to stretch and turn over, out from under that leg, but she moved again to press her breasts against my back, and wrap herself firmly around me.
58 Alice in the Year One
Alice in the Year One
I slept just fine
on your floor.
Like a baby.
Who doesn’t love concrete?
It makes you stand up straight,
But what to do with a spine
in the current condition.
You ask for a poem
for the Year One.
I greet it!
Da zdravstvuite!
Excuse me, Comrades.
I seem to have lost my drawers.
Like many of you, I was born naked.
I thought the Revolution
would solve that problem.
But it continues, despite the edicts.
Sorry, I forgot. You wanted a poem.
A celebration.
Urah!
“Hey, you, devushka,
with the fire in your hair.
Tell me, where does the Future sleep at
night?
Can you see it from here?”
Yesterday, your silhouette
In the doorway of a lighted room.
“Come into the Future,” you said.
I peered in,
But it was just another room.
No, my sister,
It won’t do.
See that ceiling?
Rooms in the Future
must have no ceilings
They block out the stars.
Down with ceilings!
Who cares if it rains?
But Comrade, we need more skies.
Tell Narkomprod.
The sky rations ran out before
eight a.m.
And I was almost to the head of the queue.
We demand more sky!
Second of all—no walls.
Things happen behind them
And not only the blah blah of the
neighbors.
Walls hold you
too tight
like an overbearing nurse.
I don’t mind being naked in public.
That’s a poet’s job,
To be naked for all of you.
But I don’t care for swaddling.
And don’t let’s forget—beds.
That fluffy stuff—it’s strictly passé.
What good are whispered words on the pillow?
What good are dreams?
They keep us asleep
make us reluctant
to get up and take our places
on the assembly line of the Future.
Also pillows have lice.
Down with snuggling!
Waiting for kisses!
The next page of the fairy tale!
In the Future we’ll all sleep standing up
like horses in a stall.
It’s far more comradely, wouldn’t you say?
“Are you coming or not?” you said.
“I’m getting tired of holding the door.”
“Of course,” I said, sniffing the air.
There was no quarreling with the Future
even if it was only the next hour’s
room.
A party was raging
There was nowhere to sit.
Tomorrow played with his Mauser,
Sprawling on the couch.
All the guests had telescopes
trained on their feet.
Well, there was still next Tuesday
And the year twenty fifty.
I went out for a smoke
But the door had disappeared.
The floor wet with broken eggs.
and the only way out was through.
I wrapped my head in the fringed shawl that lay on the bed and gazed in the small mirror over the washbasin. I’d been hoping to disguise myself, but my face only seemed framed and highlighted, even when I pulled the wool low over my eyes. I wadded some paper and stuffed it up against my gums, then took some soot from the bourgeoika and rubbed it around my eyes, hollowing my cheeks, darkening my eyebrows. In the wavy mirror over the sink, there I was as an old woman, as if I had gone straight from this
day to the edge of the grave, missing my life entirely.
A relief to be out on the drizzly, quiet streets of the city once more, the Fontanka wide and green, still flowing below the powdered pastels of the buildings across the way. Ah, to be out from under that cracked ceiling, away from those striped walls and Varvara. Down with rooms! A man stood on the Chernyshevsky Bridge, staring down into the water, smoking pensively. I could remember standing just here with Genya the last night before he went out for the defense of the city and came back to explode my life.
Nevsky Prospect was shockingly deserted. Broken and boarded-up windows, block after block. Signs had either been torn down, or stood in sad advertisement for shops long since closed. Whole sections of the wooden street pavers were broken, missing. We were going to celebrate the Year One here in this ruin? Yet I’d missed this place as a soldier misses his leg, like a broken-off piece of my heart. Or perhaps I was a broken-off piece of the city’s heart, and it was Petrograd’s great longing for one of its children that I felt. As I rambled—or, rather, hobbled—I felt as if I were walking along the lines of my own hand, the coils of my own brain, the veins of my own body. I knew every building, every bridge, my short life inseparable from these facades and railings.
An old woman, I walked unnoticed and undisturbed along the rippling canals, the mist holding the promise of more rain, veiling the buildings’ faces. I walked all the way to Palace Square and saw that Varvara was right. The scaffolding of some great project was being built, preparations for the celebration in this next room of the dream. One blond broad-shouldered man way up on the planks at the General Staff Building arch caught my eye. Sasha! I almost called out, but then remembered who I was supposed to be, this hunched old woman—I thought of her as Marfa Petrovna—and shrank back under my shawl. Seeing him made me four times lonelier for my former life.