The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  Worst were the evenings. Waiting outside restaurants like a dog in the cold. Outside nightclubs. Outside brothels. Outside the mistress’s apartment on Izmailovsky Prospekt. But some days Madam Ivanova requested the car instead of the carriage, and on those days Arkin smiled.

  ARKIN WATCHED ELIZAVETA IVANOVA WALK DOWN THE front steps of the house and considered how women of this class moved differently, held themselves differently. You could wrap them in rags and still you would know who they were, what they were. Beautiful, elegant, fragrant parasites.

  She approached across the gravel, picking her way with delicate care over the thin layer of snow that had fallen since the drive was last brushed an hour ago. He stood beside the car in his maroon uniform and peaked cap with its gold band and waited for her instructions.

  “Arkin, I want you to drive both my daughters into town today. To Gordino’s restaurant on Morskaya.” Her blue eyes studied him assessingly, and he knew she was wondering whether she could trust him.

  Both daughters. That was rare. The crippled one didn’t go out much even though he had removed the front passenger seat of the car to allow for her wheelchair to be stored there. It must be the influence of her dark-haired sister. The one who looked at him with eyes that were not easily fooled by a chauffeur’s uniform and a submissive lowering of his gaze.

  Into town today, she’d said. For one fraction of a second he almost let the wrong words slip out. Today is not the day for your daughters to be in town. Keep your daughters at home. But instead he nodded politely and opened the car door.

  ARKIN LISTENED TO EVERY WORD. HE ALWAYS DID. THAT was his job.

  The Turicum was a magnificent monster of a vehicle. Imported from Geneva, all deep blue leather and fearsome brass fittings that he polished each day within an inch of their life. He sat up front in the driver’s seat, swathed in his maroon coat, and today the air had the bite of a tiger. To keep it at bay the daughters were bundled up with a weighty bearskin rug over their knees and fur hoods over their ears.

  It will be cold for the marchers today. No bearskins. No fur hoods. Just the heat of anger in their bellies.

  As he drove through the city, the streets of St. Petersburg slid past with their tall pastel buildings and people scurrying about their business, unwilling to linger in the freezing wind. It gave him satisfaction to see the cars and carriages jostling axles, the horse-drawn drozhky lumbering along, heedless of the klaxons that demanded room to pass. The more traffic, the better. The more chaos there would be.

  He listened to their girlish chatter. Worthless words. An expression of delight as Madame Duclet’s fashionable dress shop came into view on Morskaya, a murmur of approval as they passed the renowned Zhirov establishment with its windows full of exotic china from the Orient and silverware from England. When he glanced around he saw Katya’s hands nestled in the warmth of the rug, but her eyes watched the outside world the way he would watch a circus.

  “Today,” Valentina announced, “we shall do exactly as we please.”

  “Yes,” Katya laughed, “we shall.”

  Seldom had Arkin seen the younger one allowed out without her mother or Nurse Sonya as chaperone. Today she seemed to smell freedom. But suddenly he had to brake hard. The road was blocked by a line of policemen, dark and menacing. He brought the car to a halt, but the carriage in front swayed dangerously as the horse slammed against its shafts, unnerved by a noise from up ahead. It sounded like distant thunder. Except it wasn’t. He sensed his passengers listening to the sound carefully. It was more like the drag of waves on a pebble beach, harsh and grating. Coming closer.

  All movement down Morskaya had ceased and pedestrians were backtracking along the pavement, casting nervous glances over their shoulders. Drivers found no room to maneuver around the police cordon but were wedged within the stationary traffic as tempers were roused and arguments flared.

  “What is it, Arkin?” Valentina asked. She leaned forward, close to his shoulder, in an attempt to see what lay ahead. “What is causing the delay?”

  “It’s the strikers,” he answered, careful not to alarm her. “They’re marching up Morskaya.”

  “Strikers? They’re the ones causing such trouble in the factories, aren’t they? I’ve read about them in the papers.”

  He made no comment.

  “Prime Minister Stolypin has denounced them,” she added. “For trying to destroy Russia’s economy. They’ve managed to shut down our mines and stop our trains running.”

  He still made no comment.

  “I can’t see them,” Katya complained. “The police are in the way.”

  “Look, there are the tops of their placards,” Valentina pointed out. He could hear the unease in her voice.

  Wait. Just wait. You will see more than you want.

  Ahead lay the backs of policemen, a solid wall of them from one side of the street to the other.

  “Do you think there will be trouble?” Valentina was so close behind him he could feel her breath warm on his collar. He pictured her hands, white and nervous, and the hairs rising on the back of her neck. “Why are these men on strike, Arkin?”

  Didnt she know? How could she not know?

  “They are demanding a fair wage, Miss Valentina. The police are advancing on them now.”

  Slowly, relentlessly. Advancing on them. He could make out batons in their hands. Or were they guns? The chanting of the marchers drew closer, and instantly a sense of real danger sparked in the street. It crackled in the air and people started to run, slipping on ice, skidding on snow. Arkin felt his pulse kick into life.

  “Arkin.” It was Miss Valentina’s voice. “Get us out of here. Do whatever you have to, but get us away from here.”

  “I can’t. We’re trapped in traffic.”

  “Arkin,” Valentina ordered, “please drive us out. Now.”

  He felt the muscle tighten at the corner of his jaw, and his maroon gloves curled around the rim of the steering wheel. “I cannot drive the car anywhere at the moment,” he said evenly, looking straight ahead through the windshield. “We are stuck.”

  “Arkin, listen to me. I have seen what Bolsheviks can do. I’m not going to sit here with my sister like a helpless calf and wait for them to do it again.”

  He heard it then, the whisper of fear. He swiveled around in his seat and looked her full in the face. For a moment their gaze held, until at last he looked down. “I understand, Miss Valentina.”

  “Please do something.”

  “There’s no need to be afraid of them,” he lied. “The marchers only want better pay and working conditions. No one is going to harm you. Or Miss Katya.”

  She lifted her hands as if she would shake him. “Then take out the wheelchair,” she ordered. “I’ll push it up the street myself.”

  “No need for that.”

  Abruptly he swung down hard right on the steering. He shouldered the back of the carriage in front with the Turicum’s fender, forcing it out at an angle. Ahead of them a horse whinnied, but now the heavy car’s wheels were free and Arkin could maneuver it up onto the curb of the pavement and into the open.

  “I’ll get you out of here.”

  Five

  WHICH ONES SHALL WE CHOOSE?” “You can have the meringue, it’s your favorite.”

  “What about the chocolate one?”

  “No, you can’t have that,” Katya laughed. “I want it.”

  With a delighted smile Katya circled her fork over the silver tiers of the cake stand in the middle of the table.

  “I shall choose first,” she announced.

  Valentina wanted to act as if nothing had happened. She wanted her sister to enjoy herself, that was why she’d brought her here—and it had been a long time since she’d seen Katya so bright and animated. But Valentina’s cake fork felt like lead in her fingers.

  Arkin had been as good as his word. He’d barged the car along the sidewalks, indifferent to the shouts from the pedestrians who scattered at the approach of the bi
g blue motor. He found a route out of there, just as he’d promised. They drove to another restaurant, La Gavotte, with no further comment on what had passed, and Valentina selected a table against the rear wall, near the door to the kitchens. As far from the front of the establishment as it was possible to be.

  Around her everything went on as normal, the waitresses bobbing about in black frocks with frilly white aprons and frivolous twists of white lace in their hair. All so courteous. All so polite. No anger here. No shouts. The customers were smiling and smartly dressed, bathed in the healthy glow cast by the pink glass wall lamps, picking at patisseries, sipping hot chocolate. Laughing. Talking.

  Valentina was stunned by her own fragility. No one else seemed frightened, and certainly no other customers appeared ready to bring up their lunch over the pristine white tablecloth. Everyone else was breathing normally. Was it she who was foolish, or was it them?

  “Valentina.”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you all right?” Katya was peering at her closely.

  “Yes.”

  There was a space between them that felt fragile. Breakable. Valentina refused to touch it.

  Katya deliberately changed the subject. “The new car is good, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Arkin was excellent.”

  “He drives well.”

  Valentina cast a wary glance at the wide arched windows that looked out onto the road through net curtains. Something in her chest gave a slippery shudder.

  “Can you hear something?” she asked. “I thought I heard...”

  Katya’s hand wrapped itself around Valentina’s and they lay on the cloth together, Katya’s fingers like fine strands of delicate porcelain, whereas Valentina’s were more robust, a strong pad of muscle on each finger. All those piano scales.

  “It’s all right to be frightened sometimes,” Katya said, “after what you went through in the forest.”

  Valentina looked back at the net curtains. “You weren’t frightened today.”

  “That’s because my life is so dull, I am too stupid to know when I should be afraid and when I should not. You have more sense.”

  “Katya,” Valentina asked softly, “do you think—”

  That was the moment when the barrage of bricks hurtled through the windows, when tiny raindrops of glass sliced like diamonds through powdered cheeks. When one arrow-shaped shard lodged in a woman’s neck, that was the moment the screaming began.

  VALENTINA WAS RUNNING. SLIPPING AND SLIDING ON THE snow but still running. Her legs didn’t know how to stop. The wheels of the chair screeched and skidded.

  “Valentina, don’t!” An icy hand seized hers. “Please stop. Please.”

  It was Katya. Begging her. With an effort her legs stumbled to a halt, but her fingers still gripped the handles of the wheelchair as though they had become a part of it, stiff and rigid, welded to the metal. The scream of the woman with the glass in her neck echoed in Valentina’s mind. She dragged air into her lungs and felt it peel away her flesh, it was so cold.

  “Valentina, we’ll freeze to death.”

  Katya had twisted around in her wheelchair, her ungloved hand pulling at Valentina’s sleeve. Her blue eyes were panicked.

  Valentina looked around, momentarily baffled to find herself in a narrow dirty street where household slops had frozen into treacherous yellow mounds on the pavement. A drainpipe, covered in snow, was lying like a corpse in the gutter and windows were blanked out with cardboard. Paint peeled, walls cracked. A man was watching them, his beard and his dog as ragged as his clothes.

  Oh God, what had she done?

  The moment the bricks hit the window, she’d had only one thought. To get Katya out of there. Out. Away. Safe.

  Her hands had seized the wheelchair with her sister in it and had propelled her straight through the door into the restaurant kitchen, then out the back of the building into an untidy courtyard. From there her feet had started running. Out. Away. Safe. The words hurtled around in her head. She’d darted down streets she’d never seen before, as if she knew instinctively she would be safer here among the destitute and the forgotten than among her own kind, where bombs and bricks had become the tools of speech.

  Katya’s cheeks had turned white. She was freezing to death. The north wind had whipped up from the gulf, and neither of them was wearing a coat or gloves or even a scarf. Everything had been abandoned at La Gavotte. She could almost see blood congealing in Katya’s veins. She was killing Katya. All over again. She headed straight for the nearest door. It was split down the middle and patched with strips of rough planking, but she banged on it hard. After a long wait it was opened by a child, no higher than her hip.

  “May we come in? Please. Pozhalusta. We’re cold.”

  The boy didn’t react. His face was crusted with scabs, and one filthy finger picked at a ripe spot on his chin.

  “Pozhalusta,” she said again. “Is your mother here?”

  He stepped back and she thought he would swing open the door for the wheelchair to enter, but instead he pushed it shut. She banged the wood so hard that the crack widened.

  “Open the door,” she shouted. “Otkroite dver.”

  The door eased back just enough for one blue eye to peer up at her. “What do you want?” a girl’s voice asked.

  “My sister is freezing to death out here. Please let us in.”

  But she’d learned her lesson and didn’t stop there. This time she accompanied her request with a push against the door that took the child by surprise, so that she stumbled backward. Before she could recover, Valentina had the wheelchair and herself inside the dim hallway and the door firmly shut behind them. The musty reek of rat droppings loitered on the stairs.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Spasibo.”

  In front of her huddled three filthy urchins, two identical boys and a girl with dirty blond hair. The twin boys were nervous, their clothes torn and misshapen, trousers not meeting their ankles. The girl, younger than her brothers, was staring at the wheelchair with wide-eyed curiosity.

  “Is your mother in?” Valentina asked.

  The girl pointed to a door without shifting her gaze from the spokes of Katya’s chair. “Is it a bicycle?” she whispered.

  One of the boys clipped her lightly around the ear. “Don’t be stupid, Liuba. It’s for cripples.”

  Valentina opened the door the girl had indicated and pushed the chair into a small room that was only fractionally warmer than the air outside. A stained sheet was draped over a section of the window in an attempt to keep out the cold, turning the air gray and streaky. It smelled of damp plaster and unwashed bodies.

  “I’m sorry to intrude.”

  A woman was breast-feeding an infant on the end of a narrow bed. Her body was as scrawny as an old woman’s, but her eyes were still bright and young. She was wearing fingerless mittens, a brown scarf knotted around her head. She fastened the front of her dress.

  “What do you want?” Her voice was tired.

  “My sister and I need help. Please...” Valentina hated to ask for something from this woman who so clearly had nothing to give. “My sister is cold. She needs warmth. Some hot food.”

  “My children need hot food,” the woman said sullenly, “but they don’t get any.”

  Valentina took Katya’s cold hand in hers and massaged it vigorously. The woman immediately placed the infant on the bed and went over to the small black stove in the corner. She opened its metal door, a tiny wisp of flame within it, barely alive. No wonder it was so cold. Using tongs, the woman removed a heavy stone that lay inside the stove, wrapped it up in a blackened piece of toweling that lay ready for the purpose, and placed it on Katya’s lap. Katya’s hands burrowed under it.

  “Can’t you put more wood on the fire?” Valentina suggested.

  “No.”

  “I have money.”

  The three children edged closer. The girl held out a grubby palm. “We can buy firewood.” r />
  Valentina had to trust them. She pulled two white ten-rouble notes from the purse in her pocket, even though she knew it was far too much for firewood. “Bring some food too. Hurry! Potoropites!”

  All three children vanished.

  “Here, take this.” The woman held out the blanket from the bed. Valentina looked at it. Probably riddled with lice.

  “Spasibo.” She wrapped it around her sister’s shoulders and tucked it around her limp legs, aware of the woman’s watchful scrutiny as she did so, and for the first time in her life it occurred to her to wonder how much the wheelchair was worth. As much as this woman’s family earned in a month? In a year? She had no idea. This wretched, damp place was smaller than Valentina’s bedroom at home. Part of the ceiling was hanging down and black mold was crawling up one wall. “Thank you for helping us,” she said, genuinely grateful. “There was an attack by strikers on the restaurant we were in, and my sister and I escaped, but without our coats.”

  The woman nodded her head at Katya. “Is she sick?”

  “She was in an accident.”

  The baby on the bed started to whimper and the woman said, “Pick her up.”

  Valentina looked at the squirming bundle.

  “Pick her up.” The woman’s voice was sharper this time.

  “What?”

  “You want my help. In exchange I want yours. A moment’s peace from the child.” She smiled, and there was a flash of youth in it. “Don’t worry, I won’t steal your sister’s chair.”

  A flush burned its way up Valentina’s cheeks as she picked up the baby. It had almost no hair and little twigs for legs.

  “Valentina.” It was Katya’s faint voice. “Let me hold her.”

  Valentina brought the child close to the wheelchair but didn’t hand it over. “It is dirty,” she muttered. “You don’t want...” But she saw the needy look in Katya’s eyes. She deposited the child on her sister’s lap and was appalled when she leaned down and kissed the bony little head. A smile spread across Katya’s face. Wherever she had been, she was coming back.