“You do play nicely, Saika,” Tatiana said.
“And when I play, I get into people’s hearts,” Saika said. “I made quite a bit of pocket money playing my lute in Saki.”
Tatiana was swinging her feet and listening to the crickets when Saika, also swinging in the hammock, said, “My mother is a fortune teller, you know.”
“A what?”
“You know, a lady who tells the future. You don’t have them here in Luga? I thought every village had them. I thought it was a requirement.”
Pasha and Tatiana said nothing. Blanca Davidovna, deeply religious and fully believing she was sinning, still occasionally looked at the palms and the tea leaves. Did that count?
Saika jumped up from the hammock. “Come to my house right now,” she said. “My mother is the best. She’ll tell you your future.”
Tatiana shook her head. “It’s getting late, Saika,” she said. “Maybe another time.”
“No. Come now. What are you, afraid? Pasha, you gonna let your sister cow you down?”
A curious Pasha could never resist a challenge, and he dragged Tatiana with him. Pasha was very curious. Leaning into him, Tatiana whispered, “If only you knew how to read, you would right now recall the story of Bluebeard. Idle curiosity, my dear Pasha, often leads to deep regret.”
“Yes, well, when I’m a silly woman, I’ll worry about it,” he whispered back.
“Pasha, don’t you smell her?”
“What are you talking about?”
“She smells so sour. Every time you go near her, you don’t want to hold your nose?”
“Tania, you’ve gone mad. Really, you have. She smells fine. Be quiet.”
Inside Saika’s house, the mother, Shavtala, was nowhere to be found. The doors to the bedrooms were closed. The children perched on the sofa in the dark living room that smelled heavily of smoke, and waited. “She’ll be out any minute,” said Saika. “I see you’re looking at our books, Tania. What kind of books do you like?”
“All kinds.” The Kantorovs had odd things up on their shelves. Tatiana couldn’t take her eyes off the picture of a large blue peacock over the mantel.
“You don’t like the books we have, Tania?” Saika shrugged. “Well, your Dickens, your Dumas do not write about anything I’m interested in. I like Gorky. I like Mayakovsky. I like Blok.”
“Yes, I see,” said Tatiana, reluctantly drawing her gaze away from the vivid bird. “Gorky is dead. Mayakovsky dead. Blok dead. What about Osip Mandelstam? You like him? He’s the best we’ve got, and he’s not dead—yet.”
“Who?”
Through one open casement window, Tatiana heard the click of the crickets, the rustling of the leaves—and then through the air, above the crickets and over the leaves... came a wailing howl.
She looked at Pasha.
Saika said quickly, “Tell me about Mandelstam.”
Tatiana lowered her voice. “Where is Mandelstam? The official word is that he has pneumonia and is on his deathbed. But my Deda says very soon they will say he killed himself after poetic torments.” Tatiana said the word Deda reverentially.
Saika’s eyes flared. “Your grandfather says that, does he? And who is they?”
The howls continued.
Tatiana was puzzled by them. “Saika...?” she said.
“Tania, shh.” That was Pasha.
“I thought your grandfather was a math teacher,” said Saika, “not a rumormonger.”
The piercing sounds were making it difficult for Tatiana to carry on a normal conversation. “Oh, dear!” she finally exclaimed. “What is that? Is that coming from this house?”
Pasha stared down at the unswept wood floor.
“I don’t know,” Saika said calmly. “Look, it’s stopped now. But tell me—what does your grandfather know about the traitor Mandelstam?”
“Who said he was a traitor?” Tatiana lowered her voice. “All that gorgeous poetry he wrote around the time of the revolution and then later in exile—gone, excised! And he is excised, too. As if he never existed.” Almost in a whisper herself, Tatiana said, “Perhaps my whisper/ was already born / before my lips.”
“That’s how enemies of the State are treated,” said Saika. “Excised as if they never existed. Not even a whisper left. Nothing left.”
“The poet Mandelstam is an enemy of the State?” Tatiana said with surprise.
“Of course,” said Saika. “He is a man who believes in the self more than he believes in the State. The self is dead! The Writers’ Union expressly told him, told everyone, Socialist Realism only. No personal poetry. He went directly against all precepts and laws set forth in the doctrine. For that he became an enemy of the State.”
It was Tatiana’s turn to be silent. “Saika, I thought you didn’t know who Mandelstam was.”
Saika said carelessly, “Oh, I know something about him.”
“Yes,” Tatiana said, “for a goat herder’s daughter, for someone who lived in the mountains, who did not read books or newspapers, you sure do know a lot about...a lot of things.” In Tatiana’s tone was a flickering sparrow of darkening confusion, but in Saika’s tone as she answered was a swollen puff of peacock pride.
“I told you, Tania. I make it my business to know everything. Which is why I want Mama to read your fortune.”
Loud high-pitched inhuman cries resumed suddenly.
Pasha jumped up. “You know what? We have to go.”
“No, no, stay,” said Saika. “She’ll be out in a minute.”
“No. Come on, Tania.” He grabbed her hand, pulling her up. “Saika, what is that sound?” said Tatiana. “Those beastly cries will wake the dead! Please tell me that’s not your mother.”
“Tania, let’s go!”
“Pasha is right, Tania,” said Saika, sitting quietly on the couch. “You really should run along.”
Pasha yanked on Tatiana’s arm. But she was concerned, worried. She stared at the closed doors, at the open windows. “No...it’s...out there . . . it sounds like... caterwauling.”
“Must be cats then,” said Saika. “Or coyotes.”
“Coyotes . . .” Tatiana repeated. “Carnivorous canines? In Luga?” She turned to her brother. “Do we have wolves in Luga, Pasha?”
“I don’t know, Tania.” Pasha was headed outside, dragging Tatiana behind him. “You with your questions. Will you ever stop?”
“Another time then,” Saika called after them. “My mother will read your fortune another time.”
They were out in the night air. It was no better outside. The shrieks were coming from the Kantorov house, and they were knife-like. Across the weedy yards, over the broken fence and the overgrown grass, in their little summer dacha, Dasha and Babushka were peering outside, muttering obscenities and slamming shut all the crusty windows. When Tatiana and Pasha came inside their house, small and compact Deda, still like smooth and clear glass, was sitting calmly, his magnificent head of salt-and-pepper hair focused over his tangled fishing lines. He sat in his chair on the screened porch almost as if he were deaf.
Babushka was not deaf. Larger than him, gray and imperious, after slamming the windows and muttering, “Indecent! Simply indecent!” over and over, she ran out of words. She put on the little radio, turned the sound up high. They caught only static.
No one knew what to say. Except for Deda who was busy with his lines, everyone kept casting nervous glances toward Tatiana.
Babushka said, “Do we have any mountain ash? Some superstitions believe that the rowan tree or mountain ash drives away evil spirits.”
“Anna!” That was Deda atypically raising his voice to Babushka. “Have you got nothing, nothing else to do? Mountain ash?”
Tatiana laughed.
Late that night, after Babushka and Deda were long in bed, Dasha, Pasha, and Tatiana were sitting on the small porch around the kerosene lamp talking about Saika and her scars. “She got completely naked in front of all of you?” Dasha said incredulously. “Tomorrow I will tell her
not to do that again. Or I swear, I will tell her mother.”
Pasha coughed. Dasha coughed.
Tatiana smiled. “Her mother, the, um, loud fortune teller?” she said.
Oh, such coughing from her brother and sister! “Come on, Tania, aren’t you a little interested?” said Pasha, shifting the subject slightly. “A real fortune teller! I mean, that’s exciting, no? Someone who sees through unfathomable things to the future, to the path of your life? We’ve never met anyone like that. Blanca Davidovna and her tea leaves don’t count. Aren’t you curious?”
“No,” Tatiana replied. “Not in the slightest.” She was sitting on the floor between Dasha’s legs, watching Pasha shuffle cards, while Dasha was braiding her hair, splitting it, kneading it, caressing her head, tying up the white-gold down feathers with satin ribbons. As her hands moved across Tatiana’s head, Tatiana closed her eyes, feeling sleepy in the late night with her brother and sister.
“Why not?” said Pasha.
“Yeah, Tania,” said Dasha. “Even I’m interested in hearing what she has to say.”
A relaxed and murmuring Tatiana said, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, for inwardly they are ravening wolves . . .” Amused at her own joke, at her reference to wolves, at her funny family, Tatiana laughed.
Pasha and Dasha didn’t laugh. “Who says she is a false prophet?” said Dasha. “Where did you hear that?”
“Blanca Davidovna.”
“Um, but, do you have any questions, Tania?” Pasha said with another one of his peculiar coughs, like he had a fish bone stuck in his throat. “For me...or, say, for Dasha?”
“Well, if you two clever-clogs have the answers,” Tatiana said, blinking at him with amused affection, “why are you running to the loud fortune teller?”
A Fateful Visit
Mama came for the weekend on Friday night from Leningrad. But Mama did not come alone. Mama brought Mark with her. Mark! Dasha’s dentist boss.
When Tatiana saw them through her window coming down the dusty road, she jumped from her bed and ran to the porch on the other side of the house, where she shook her sister, who was reading a newspaper, and hissed, “Mama brought Mark, Dasha. Mark!” What a mire. And by Dasha’s horrified face, it looked as if Tatiana didn’t know the half of it. And perhaps she didn’t, but she did know that in the last week, after all the chores and the housework and the dinner and the cleaning were done, Dasha fixed herself up, put on nice clothes, and disappeared for long walks in the woods with Stefan.
Mark came in, still in his suit, a balding man in his thirties. There was awkward confusion. Dasha fussed, bleated, giggled—and finally offered him a cup of tea. Babushka offered him something stiffer. Deda, as always, said nothing.
They had dinner. The conversation was stilted and broken. Dasha and Mark made small talk about the weather, and Leningrad, and white nights, and work. Deda and Mark made small talk about Hitler and Italy and Abyssinia and Spain. Tania stayed quiet. An exhausted Mama sat near Pasha and asked quiet questions only of him. How was he feeling? How was he sleeping? How was he fishing? How was Tatiana behaving?
At ten in the evening, when it seemed much too late for social visits, Tatiana heard a knock on the porch door. Deda sent Tania. Stefan and Saika stood outside.
Dasha nearly groaned out loud.
Tatiana stood quietly in front of them and said nothing. Finally it was Babushka who came forward and said, “Tatiana Georgievna! What in the world is wrong with you? Tell your friends to come in. Come in, please. Come in.”
Tatiana sighed, going to sit next to Dasha, who had moved a little away from Mark. Dasha struggled to her feet as Saika and Stefan came in.
Poor Dasha looked so flummoxed that Deda was forced to intercede with the introductions. And unsmiling Stefan shook hands with a smiling Mark.
For a few minutes Deda sat constitutionally quiet and then said he was going to bed, dragging Babushka with him. “Leave the young ones alone, Anna,” he said. “They’ll work it all out. They always do.”
Tatiana didn’t think so. She asked if anyone wanted to play dominoes. Her family usually refused to play dominoes with her, but Mark absent-mindedly played six times. And lost six times. Pasha to make him feel better said he would never win even if he was rapt on his tiles.
The conversation they made was wretched. Mark kept repeating that for him this was a rare weekend off. He was a dentist and Dasha worked for him when it wasn’t summer. He must have noticed Stefan’s cold stares at Dasha because he clammed up, and then conversation really ground down. Not soon enough, Stefan got up and said they had to be going.
That’s when Saika handed Dasha her shawl and said, “You left it in our house, Dasha, the other night after you came back from your walk with Stefan.”
Tatiana, deeply frowning, looked away. It was a train wreck. What was Saika doing? Tatiana excused herself and disappeared to her room, and in a moment Saika knocked on her window, asking if she wanted to sneak outside. Tatiana did not.
After the light was turned off and she was nearly asleep, she heard voices in the yard. At first she thought it was Saika again, but it was Dasha and Mark, she trying to be quiet, he trying to be loud.
Tatiana didn’t want to hear a single word, but since she couldn’t shut her window without proclaiming her wakefulness, she put a pillow over her head and started humming. Only when Dasha’s voice became louder, did curiosity and sadness for her sister get the better of Tatiana, and she removed the pillow to listen.
“Why did I come here?” Mark was saying. “I came here because I wanted to be with you, Dasha. And I thought you wanted to be with me.”
“This is a dead end between us,” said Dasha. “I know you think we’re having quite a romance, and I’m certainly not expecting more, I’m not asking you for more. Staying late after work in your office is enough for me in Leningrad. But I didn’t realize you felt I owed you even in Luga.”
Tatiana started humming. Mark said something.
“That’s what you want, right?” Dasha said. “Me to give myself to you for fifteen minutes during our lunch break, or between patients, on the reception sofa before you run home to your wife, while I go home to sleep in bed with my sister? Is there more, Mark? Because I didn’t realize there was. I thought that we were pretty much squeezing every drop out of the dry rag that is our relationship.”
Hummm...
Mark said something. It sounded like, “But I love you.”
“Did you love me when I got pregnant last year”—
Oh no! HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
—“What did you say to me then? You must have been saying I love you, but what I heard was, Dasha, there’s nothing we can do. We have nowhere to go. That must have been your I love you. And I knew you were right. Did I complain? Did I ask you to come with me to the clinic? No. I went by myself after work, and stood in line like all the other women, and afterward, another woman, a complete stranger, helped me walk home. The next day, I came into work. You and I went on as before. Oh, and by the way, I love you, too, Mark.” Dasha was crying.
Hummm...
“I’m resigned to my life,” Dasha said. “Resigned to my life at twenty-one.” Tatiana couldn’t hum loud enough to drown out her sister’s breaking voice. “But you know what? I think I prefer five hot minutes in the woods with Stefan to two years on that freezing sofa with you.”
“I love you, I do,” Mark said faintly. “I came to tell you I’m planning to tell my wife I’m leaving.”
“You better do more than figure out how to tell her, Mark,” said Dasha. “You better figure out how to leave her.”
“I thought we could stay in the office until the council found us a new place.”
“In the office? What, on the couch?” Dasha paused. Quietly they said some things Tatiana blessedly couldn’t hear. Then Dasha said, “Why can’t you just tell her she has to go live somewhere else? Tell her she has to leave, not you. Why does she get to stay? It’s y
our apartment. It’s registered to you. It’s her problem if there’s nowhere for her to live.”
Mark said something Tatiana couldn’t hear, but what she did hear was Dasha’s subsequent, “Are you kidding me? Oh my God! Oh my God!”
“She just told me last week,” Mark said quickly. “I didn’t know. She says it’s illegal now anyway to get rid of it.”
“Now, there’s a reason to keep a baby!” yelled Dasha.
“Well, she said she didn’t want to get rid of it.”
“She told you she was going to have a baby and you’re standing here under the cherry blossoms with me figuring out a way to leave her?”
Tatiana heard struggling, wrestling, slaps, footsteps, tears, heard Dasha walking away, crying, saying, “You are such a prize, Mark. You are such a fucking prize.”
Mark stayed outside smoking. Tatiana heard him even through the pillow over her head, kicking branches, muttering, lighting cigarette after cigarette.
He left to go back to Leningrad the following foggy morning at dawn. No one saw him go except Tatiana who watched his stooped back and his bag in his hand as he shuffled down the road. She watched him until he disappeared from sight and the cows went out to pasture, their bells clanging.
Tatiana could not even read her book, lying on her side, pitying her poor sister.
After going with Dasha to the women’s public baths at the banya that Saturday night, she and Dasha walked quietly back home, all bathed and clean, and flushed and red. Saika, who had not gone to the baths, asked if Tatiana wanted to come out and play, but Tatiana again refused. At home Dasha made Tatiana a fresh egg yolk and sugar milk shake, and after drinking it, Tatiana lay her head on Dasha’s lap on the porch sofa.
“Dashenka, sister, Dasha?”
“Yes?” She sounded so sad.
Tatiana swallowed. “Want to hear a funny story?”
“Oh, yes, please. I need a funny story to cheer me up. Tell me, darling.”
“Stalin as Chairman of the Presidium went in front of the Houses of Parliament to make a short speech that lasted maybe five minutes. After the speech there was applause.
“The plenum stood on its feet and applauded. For a minute. Then another minute. Then another minute.