The Jewel of St. Petersburg

  THE AROMA OF HOT PIROZHKI CHANGED EVERYTHING. THE three children seemed to swell out into their skin before they’d even been given one of the meat pies from the greaseproof paper package. They sat on the floor, in front of the blazing logs in the stove, and watched the fire with the kind of fascination that Valentina would give to a performance of the ballet.

  “Shouldn’t they wash their hands?” Valentina suggested as she placed a pie on each palm. The dirt on their fingers was blacker than the floor.

  “The water pump is frozen.” The woman shrugged and took a large bite out of a slice of bread spread with black currant conserve. As she chewed on it, Valentina watched the features of her face melt with pleasure and grow astonishingly younger.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Varenka Sidorova.”

  “I’m Valentina. My sister’s name is Katya.”

  Katya was sipping hot tea and honey from a tin mug, and there was color in her cheeks now. The infant lay like a kitten on her lap.

  “Varenka, what does your husband do?”

  The woman’s eyes grew cautious. “He works in a factory.”

  “Is he a Bolshevik?”

  She saw the tightening of the skin under the woman’s eyes. “What do you know of Bolsheviks?”

  “Was he in the march today?”

  Varenka started to laugh. The children looked around at her, astonished, as though unused to the sound, but the laughter didn’t stop. It went on and on, rolling from her open mouth. Veins in her neck stood out and tears slid down her cheeks, but still the laughter filled the air. She dropped to her knees, and then the laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun. She yanked off the headscarf, releasing a crop of chestnut curls. Valentina stared. Katya gave a small smothered gasp. One side of the woman’s head was hairless, and a wide white scar, glistening as though wet, ran from her temple right across her skull to the back of her head. She regarded the sisters with a mixture of pity and hatred.

  “Five years ago in front of the Winter Palace gates,” she said in a hard voice, “your soldiers came at me with their sabers when we marched to speak to the tsar. We intended no harm but they mowed us down. Yet I survived. And because of that, you survive today. Because of my help, you survive. But do you deserve to?”

  Valentina lifted the baby from Katya’s lap and laid it on the bed. “I think it’s time we left.”

  “You!” Still on her knees, the woman was pointing at Valentina. “I promise you that one day soon we will come for you and your kind, and this time you will not survive. You idle rich. You parasites.” She spat on the floor. “The workers will demand justice.”

  Valentina took out her purse and upended it on the table. Roubles clattered everywhere, and the children scurried around like mice, gathering them up. “Take this because you helped me today. I am grateful.” She walked over to the kneeling woman and let her fingers touch the shiny scar on her head. Not wet, but smooth and slippery, as colorless as something that lived underground. “I’m sorry, Varenka.”

  “I don’t want your pity.”

  “Valentina.” It was Katya. “She wants us gone.”

  “Yes, you’re right. Before my man gets back.” Varenka glared defiantly at Valentina. “My Bolshevik.”

  A loud bang on the front door startled them. Before they could react it came twice more, like a hammer blow, and they heard the wood splinter. The woman scooped up the baby and clutched it to her breast so hard it started to whimper. Valentina’s heart pounded. “Wait here, Katya,” she said.

  “No, Valentina, don’t...”

  The hammering on the door came again. Without hesitation Valentina opened the door into the dismal hallway and unlocked the shattered front door onto the street. A massive figure blocked out the light.

  “What the fuck are you doing in this shit hole, Valentina Ivanova?”

  It was Liev Popkov.

  Six

  ARKIN WAS A MECHANIC, BUT IN HIS HEART HE REGARDED himself as a skilled surgeon of machines. He took good care of his hands and read constantly about the latest inventions, expanding his knowledge. Thank the Lord he could read. Not that the Lord had anything to do with it. Most peasants couldn’t read or write, but his mother was the exception and used to rap his knuckles with her knitting needle to jog his sluggish brain into action.

  “Viktor,” she used to say when he was at her knee struggling with a jumble of letters, trying to cram them into the shape of words, “a man who can read is a man who can rule the world.”

  “But I don’t want to rule the world.”

  “Not now. But one day you will. Then you will thank me.”

  HE SMILED TO HIMSELF AT THE MEMORY. “SPASIBO, THANK you,” he murmured. Now he was twenty-three, and he did want to rule the world. His mother had been right.

  “Arkin.”

  He lifted his head. He was crouched on the concrete floor of the garage, rinsing the oil and horse dung off the spokes of the Turicum’s wheels, leaving their blue paint gleaming. His cloth splashed grimy suds onto his boots.

  “What is it, Popkov?”

  The Cossack had entered the garage on silent feet. For a big man he moved noiselessly. Like the wolves in the forest back home.

  “What?” Arkin asked again.

  “The mistress wants to speak to you in the house.”

  “About this afternoon?”

  “How do I know?”

  Living on a farm in the middle of the godforsaken steppes teaches a man patience. In the countryside life is never in a hurry, the rhythms are slow, and Arkin knew well how to wait. He had left his village six years ago when he was seventeen, determined to live and work in St. Petersburg. Here he could feel the heart of Russia beating. Here the ideas of great men like Karl Marx and Lenin grew and spread underground like the roots of a tree. In this city, he was convinced, lay the future of Russia. He turned back to finish off the wheel before rinsing out the cloth and hanging it tidily on a hook. When he looked round, Liev Popkov was still there, as he’d known he would be. The big man was a law unto himself in too many ways for Arkin’s liking.

  “What the hell were you doing?” Popkov demanded.

  Arkin removed his long brown apron and hung it on another hook. “Doing? I was protecting them.”

  “Letting them run loose? Is that your idea of protecting them?”

  “They’re not children, Popkov. They’re young women. They make their own decisions, right or wrong.”

  “This city is dangerous.”

  “Dangerous for them? Or for the workers who die in the factories every day?”

  “You’re a fool,” Popkov snorted.

  “No,” Arkin said patiently. “I’m just doing my job.”

  IT WAS THE FIRST TIME ARKIN HAD SET FOOT IN THE HOUSE beyond the servants’ kitchen, and it was hard not to stare. Why would anyone want so many things? Pictures taller than himself hanging on the walls. Rubies festooned like drops of blood around a mirror and strips of gold around the plinth of each statue. A footman ushered him into a small sitting room. It struck Arkin as the most feminine room he had ever stood in, all lilacs and creams. Flowers scented the air with exotic fragrances that were new to him.

  Elizaveta Ivanova was sitting very upright on an elegant chair, a glass of hot water in one hand. Her lavender gown made her look like one of the flowers herself. He bowed, with his hands at his sides, and waited for her to speak. She took her time. A full minute ticked past.

  “Arkin,” she said at last, “explain yourself.”

  “Certainly, madam. I drove the two young ladies to take tea at Gordino’s, but we were prevented from approaching it by a crowd of strikers marching up Morskaya.”

  “Go on.”

  “We were caught in a line of blocked traffic, but I managed to maneuver out of it and take the young ladies to a different establishment of their choice.”

  “You should have brought them straight home. The streets were dangerous.”

  “I did suggest it,
madam. But both young ladies were against the idea; they declined to return home.”

  “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” The words escaped from her, startling them both. “What I don’t understand is where were you when they left the tearoom? You have a responsibility, Arkin, when you chauffeur for this family. I thought that was explained to you when...” She stopped, holding the glass of water near her mouth but not actually touching it. “They are headstrong,” she murmured.

  He gave her a faint smile. “You know your daughters, madam.”

  “Well enough.”

  “I deeply regret that the marchers forced me to park the Turicum in a side street and when I returned on foot to the tearoom, the place was in a state of panic. Miss Valentina and Miss Katya had gone.”

  “Did you search for them?”

  “Of course, madam.”

  Did he search? Did he shout their names? Did he race like a fool from street to street and shop to shop? Did he seize people by their lapels and demand whether they had seen a wheelchair? Yes, he ran until his lungs hurt and cursed those young girls till his tongue burned, but still he didn’t find them.

  Elizaveta Ivanova nodded. “Of course you did. I can see you are a reliable young man.”

  “I’m sorry, madam. I apologize for giving you cause for concern.”

  “How did you find them in the end?”

  “I came back here and gathered a team of men to search more thoroughly.”

  She remained silent, forcing him to voice more than he wanted.

  “Liev Popkov found them,” he admitted with reluctance. “He traced the tracks of the wheelchair in the snow.”

  Like a bloodhound, the Cossack had been. Scouring the pavement, his face inches from the ground, finding the faintest of treads from a tire even when the surface had been trampled on.

  She let the conversation cease. Sipped her water, her throat contracting above the creamy pearl necklace. “Katya is unwell,” she said after a silence.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  The fairness of her comment astounded him. Most employers liked to blame servants for everything. He waited, but no more words followed.

  “Would you like to speak to Popkov himself about it?” he asked.

  She gave the smallest of shudders. “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t.”

  IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING. VALENTINA HAD been sitting in the dark for two hours. When she heard Nurse Sonya’s heavy tread finally leaving Katya’s room, she waited a few minutes, then slipped out into the corridor. Her bare feet were soundless and she turned the doorknob to the sickroom with no more than a faint click. A fire crackled in the grate behind a mesh guard and on the bed a bulky quilt had been pushed aside, so that it lay humped like a range of mountains. The slight figure of her sister lay immobile under a sheet, though her head tossed restlessly on the pillows as if it belonged to someone else.

  “Katya,” Valentina whispered.

  Instantly the blond head lifted off the pillows. “Valentina?”

  “How are you?”

  “Bored.”

  Valentina knelt on the end of the bed. “You know what gave you the fever, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “That kiss on the filthy baby’s head.”

  “It was worth it,” Katya smiled.

  “You didn’t tell Mama or Nurse about it, did you?”

  “Of course not. I’m not stupid.”

  “Think of it as an adventure. But one we won’t be repeating. I overreacted, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t say you won’t take me on any more adventures.”

  “If you really want adventures, Katya, you must get better. I’ll give them to you,” she promised, “only not quite as dangerous as that one.”

  “An adventure isn’t an adventure if it isn’t dangerous. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” She pushed her damp hair from her eyes. “Tell me what the woman’s scar felt like when you touched it.”

  “Like warm glass. Hard and slippery.”

  “I felt sorry for her.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true, Katya. I hate them. I don’t care whether they call themselves Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, or Social Revolutionaries, they’re all the same to me. I hate them because of what they did to you.” She moved forward and kissed her sister’s hot cheek.

  Katya lifted her hand and tenderly stroked her sister’s dark hair. “It’ll go eventually, the hatred,” she said with confidence.

  “Did yours?” Your hatred of what they did to you? Of what I did to you?

  “Yes.”

  Valentina didn’t tell Katya it was too late. That the hatred had already burned its way down into her bones.

  SHE KNOCKED ON THE DOOR OF HER FATHER’S STUDY. IT was time to tell him of her decision.

  “Come in. Vkhodite.”

  She pushed open the door. Her father was seated at his broad leather-topped desk and raised his head from the papers he was studying.

  “You asked to see me?” he said. He didn’t look pleased about the interruption.

  “Yes.”

  He folded his arms. An unlit cigar flicked impatiently between two fingers. He was still a good-looking man, though a little heavy now from too many banquets at the Winter Palace, but she remembered him lean and fit when he served as a general in the Russian army. He wore his hair swept back from his face, with thick eyebrows over shrewd deep-set eyes. Dark as her own. They assessed her now.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  She sat on the chair in front of the desk and tucked her hands neatly in her lap. “Papa, I wish to apologize for taking Katya down to the Rzhevka district yesterday. I was trying to keep her safe from the strikers who—”

  “I accept your apology.” He brushed a hand over his dark whiskers, as though he could brush away his thoughts. “What you did,” he said, “was foolish, but I realize you were trying to protect your sister.”

  She had expected worse.

  “Is that all?” he asked. “I am busy.”

  “No,” she said. “That’s not all.”

  He placed his cigar in an ashtray, then lined it up precisely beside a pen and a red pencil in front of him. His eyes lingered on the cigar as if he preferred to smoke it in peace. Her father had an orderly mind, which was why he worked where he did. Valentina didn’t know exactly what he did as a government minister, but she knew it had something to do with finance. She used to imagine him in his office at the Chancellery counting the tsar’s money, tall stacks of roubles right up to the ceiling.

  Finally he grew tired of her silence and glanced up.

  “What else?” he asked with a touch of impatience. “I have work to do.”

  “Papa, I don’t want to return to school when the new term starts.”

  He stared at her, surprised. No hint of the anger she had expected.

  Then he smiled.

  “I hope you approve, Papa,” she added quickly.

  “I do indeed. Your mother and I have discussed the situation and we are convinced that schooling can do nothing more for you. It’s time to think about your future.”

  It was only tiny, that first prickle of unease. She gave it no thought.

  “I agree, Papa. I’m so pleased you think so too. That’s what I’ve been planning. I have an idea.”

  He sat back in his chair and picked up the cigar on his desk with pleasure. He dispensed with its band, clipped one end, and smelled its fragrant leaves before taking his time lighting it. She had the feeling he was already celebrating something.

  “So, Valentina,” he said, “for once we agree. You are a good daughter now.”

  Now. Even so. It was a first step.

  She tried to hold the moment, to not let it trickle through her fingers. “This idea of yours, have you discussed it with your mother?”

  “Not yet, Papa. I wanted to discuss it with you
first.”

  “Foolish girl.” He smiled and exhaled a twisting string of smoke in her direction. “What do I care for dresses?”

  “Dresses?”

  “Yes, the dresses you have an idea about. You must discuss them with your mother. Mothers are the ones who deal with such matters.”

  She inhaled quickly. Tasted the smoke. “Papa, I didn’t mention dresses.”

  “Well, don’t worry, I’m certain your mother will want to talk about them.” He nodded indulgently. “I know what ladies are like when it comes to gowns.”

  He rose from his seat and marched across the room, his body thick-waisted inside his frock coat. He was making a lot of noise, his sleeves rustling, his feet striding over the polished boards, his fingers tapping his shirt front. She knew these signs, recognized them as indications that he was exceedingly pleased. What was happening here? This conversation was not going right.

  “I won’t need more than a few dresses,” she pointed out warily.

  “No, my dear. If you’re to make a catch you’ll need at least thirty or forty gowns, I imagine. But I leave all that to your mother. The important thing is that the decision is made and we have already compiled a list of names for you to consider.”

  “Papa, what do you mean, make a catch?”

  He looked at his elder daughter fondly. “Find a husband, of course.”

  “A husband?” Her hands fell off her lap.

  “Yes, of course. Isn’t that what we’re talking about? Leaving school and finding a husband.” He drew on his cigar with obvious pleasure, paced the room, and flicked away stray strands of tobacco from his shirt front. “You’ll soon be eighteen, Valentina. Time to behave responsibly. Find a suitable husband this season and get married. Plenty of fine strong officers out there from good families.”

  “I am not getting married, Papa.”

  “Let’s have no foolishness, Valentina. What are you going on about now?”

  “I am not getting married.”

  “You just said you were ready to set about planning your future.”

  “Yes, but not as a wife.”