The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  “Yes. And I set my eyes on the great domed cathedral.” Yevno smiled down at the awe-filled faces of his daughters. “When I wearied of trying to sell your mother’s shoes, I went inside. One day I will take you to see it. Gold everywhere! Not only on the communion vessels as in our own poor church in Akulin. The altar rails were gilded, the chandeliers shone with gold, the crucifixes and icons . . . Everywhere I looked gold seemed to be sparkling. And the beautiful painting of the Sabaoth God! What a wonder! Just imagine, when we gaze upon God himself, He will be even more wondrous than any icon ever painted.”

  The girls giggled with delight. “When will you take us to Pskov, Papa?” asked Tanya.

  “When the time is right, my child,” replied Yevno. “Now, children,” he went on, “your mama will have the food ready soon. There will be time enough for talk later.”

  “Girls,” added Sophia as her two daughters bounded down from their father’s lap, “before you take off your coats, go back outside and take down the clothes from the line—we mustn’t let them get caught in the storm.” She picked up an old basket from a corner and gave it to Vera. “Where are the boys?”

  “They stopped in the village to talk to some of Paul’s friends,” answered Vera.

  Sophia grimaced. “It is bad enough that Paul associates with those . . . strangers,” she said, “but I will not have him bringing my baby around them. You must speak with him, Yevno.”

  Yevno said nothing until Tanya and Vera disappeared through the door. Then he exhaled a long sigh. “I will, wife. But Paul would not let harm come near his little brother.”

  “I’m happy harvest is past. Perhaps now the strangers will leave.”

  “Paul is a good boy. He will take care of Ilya.”

  “No doubt you are right. But I would feel better if he had nothing to do with them at all. They are older. I cannot help worrying.”

  Sophia returned with vigor to her labors. When she spoke again it was with an obvious effort to push anxieties from her mind. “So, husband, did you talk to anyone in the city?”

  “Here and there. But it was not pleasant talk. We in the country are not the only ones who are poor. I think it is perhaps worse for the peasants in the city. They have not even the comfort of nature to soothe them. What would we do if we could not gaze upon our trees, or walk by the sparkling stream, or breathe deeply from the fresh air of the plain?”

  “Trees and streams do not feed the stomach.”

  “Ah, but they feed the soul.”

  “That may be so,” sighed Sophia. “Somehow, though, I think we would get by, even in the city.”

  “By God’s provision,” Yevno replied. “But I am so thankful such is not our lot. I saw great bitterness there, wife. Much turmoil is in the world. It may even touch us before it is over.”

  “Touch us? As far away from the city as we are?”

  “Twelve versts is not so far. We have seen them already in Katyk, Sophia. Who is to say the strangers we have seen are not the same as I have heard about? Thousands of them, they say, students and young people, are flocking to the countryside from the cities—big cities like Kiev and St. Petersburg. If their unrest comes to Pskov, it may touch us even in Katyk.”

  “Perhaps it already has,” said Sophia grimly. Yevno knew she was thinking of Paul. “But why do they do this, Yevno? Why do they not leave us alone?”

  “They call themselves revolutionaries. They preach socialism and many other strange new doctrines. They talk of better times, of people all sharing and owning everything together. They think they are helping us, Sophia. I heard a young man today who might have been one of them. What things he had to say! The police finally dragged him off.”

  “Did the people listen to him?”

  “Many like myself took in his words. But how much they truly heard it is impossible to say. I only understood some of it myself. Some shouted their support. Others were angry, or suspicious. Country peasants in Russia, even in a town the size of Pskov, do not take easily to change, even though we all desperately hope for something better for our families.”

  “It sounds like this street preacher changed little.” Sophia sounded relieved.

  “Not today, perhaps. But I think he will be heard from again . . . and more like him.”

  Yevno’s words trailed away as the door to the cottage opened.

  5

  Yevno Burenin loved this time of day more than any other—resting from the labor and toil of the day to be showered with the loving, exuberant greetings of his children. But as his two sons now came through the door—Ilya propped on his big brother’s shoulders—Yevno found himself unexpectedly filled with mixed emotions.

  Little Ilya’s face broke into a grin of childish glee as he scrambled down and bounded toward his father’s waiting arms. Paul, on the other hand, wore a serious expression as he bent respectfully to kiss his father’s cheek. Yevno remembered when Paul had been no more than a baby like Ilya, cheerful and uncomplicated. Now the boy bore the weight of the world, or so it seemed, on his young shoulders.

  As Sophia continued the conversation with Yevno, there was a harsher aspect to her voice, as if she meant her comments for the benefit of her older son. “I would not be surprised if they were all carried away by the police. They only bring trouble. No one listens. Their words might as well be lost on the wind.”

  “Who is this?” asked Paul as he bent over the basin. “Did the police come to our village?”

  “Your father went to Pskov today.”

  “I heard there was trouble there,” said Paul.

  Yevno nodded noncommittally.

  “Did you see the fellow who was arrested, Papa? He was a friend of Kazan’s.” Paul took up the towel his father had used a few moments before and blotted the moisture off his hands and face.

  Yevno studied his fifteen-year-old son for a moment. Enthusiasm still shone from his young eyes, but it was different from little Ilya’s youthful zest for life. Paul’s eyes did not glow, they burned. It almost seemed as if he envied the youth in Pskov and his imprisonment. All Yevno could think was that Paul was just a boy, too young to have his mind so burdened, too young to involve himself with . . .

  The father’s mind drifted off without completing the thought as his eyes probed the face before him. Yevno saw more of emerging manhood in his son than he cared to admit. Paul was nearly as tall as his father, though not so husky of build. Yet many long seasons of hard work in the fields had already given him a sturdy, sinewy appearance, with strong arms and a purposeful stride. The boy was not strikingly handsome, but his finely cut features revealed an openness and honesty like his father’s. His eyes, though, flamed with an intensity that came from neither father nor mother, but from somewhere deep within his own soul.

  Yevno could not regret that he had fathered an intelligent, caring son who sorrowed for the plight of his fellow man. In a way Sophia could never understand, Yevno was proud of his son. Yet he was also saddened, for he intuitively knew that Paul’s lot would never be that of a common country peasant. Times were different now. If Paul and Anna were any measure, something within Yevno told him he must resign himself to the fact that the Burenin children were marked to follow their own unique and individual paths in life.

  “ . . . such will be your end, Paul, if you continue to mix with those vagabonds!”

  Yevno became aware of his wife’s words in mid-sentence. He had missed what went before, although he could well imagine.

  “You speak as if they are criminals, Mama,” replied Paul defensively. “Is it a crime to speak one’s mind? Is it a crime to want freedom?”

  “You are a baby. What do you know of such things?” said Sophia.

  The flash that broke into Paul’s eyes at his mother’s words, to his credit, found no immediate response in an explosion of words. “I am alive, that is enough!” he finally managed to say, somehow maintaining a respectful tone despite the passion raging in his breast. “I can feel the yoke of injustice on my back as
well as any grown man. What promieshik must send his daughter far away in order to keep his family from starving?”

  Sophia gasped. She sent a bewildered look toward Yevno.

  “Yes,” Paul went on, “I know about Anna.” His tone had softened and carried with it both apology and regret.

  “Does Anna—?”

  “No, Mama. I only just learned of it myself. But I would never have told her anyway.”

  “You must understand, my son,” said Yevno, “that your mother and I feel it is the best thing. We would not do it if we thought otherwise. And in the end, the final decision will be your sister’s.”

  “You know Anna will not refuse. She is too kindhearted.”

  Paul shook his head bitterly, then went on in a woeful tone that again sounded much too old for one of his years. “But I do not blame you or Mama for this. I blame a system of government that would cause such grief to happen. I blame the injustice of a country where by accident of birth a very few live in wealth and luxury, while the vast masses live—and die—in such poverty that they must toil their lives away and yet never have enough to eat.”

  “Such big thoughts for such a little boy,” said Sophia sadly.

  This time Paul could not contain his reply. “Little boy? Mama, when will you see that I am almost a man? And even if I am still young, does that mean I cannot think?”

  “Maybe you think too much.”

  “Mama—” Paul’s voice failed him in frustration. He glanced toward his father, his eyes pleading for understanding. “Papa,” he began, more softly now, “change must come from the young, and I am glad that God has given me eyes to see these things. There are people in this country who will not rest until the system is turned upside-down. They will make a new Russia, one in which you, Papa, will not have to break your back to put French champagne on the tables of Baron Gorskov or that vile-hearted Cyril Vlasenko.”

  The lad said no more, but in his eyes Yevno saw a determination that frightened him.

  Yevno sighed heavily. “Our Pavushka is right, wife. Change is coming. I sensed it today more than ever—not in what was said, or in anything exactly that I saw. It was more a feeling in the air, like how the Jew Reb Plotnick knows when the weather is about to change.”

  “His shoulder always aches before a storm,” said Sophia.

  Yevno chuckled softly. “A little like that, perhaps.” Then his face turned solemn. “However, I think the ache of these times, what I felt today in the city, is located more in the neighborhood of the heart.” He glanced at Paul.

  “I do not like change,” said Sophia flatly.

  Yevno knew she was thinking more of the impending changes in their own family, and of her anxiety over Paul, than of any street-corner speechmakers.

  Yevno rose from his chair and walked over to his wife. He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “It matters little whether we like it or not,” he said gently. “The forces that bring change are usually bigger than simple folk like us. And all change is not bad. God brings new winds to our lives to keep us from being too attached to this world, and to make us trust Him. He brings the rains, he brings the snows, then He brings back the sun. Always life is changing. No matter what happens, He will sustain us through it.”

  She nodded but did not immediately reply.

  He saw tears rising in her dark, round eyes. She lifted her apron to blot at them, then turned back to the diversion of her work. In a moment she said, “You will tell her, Yevno? I . . . I do not think I can.”

  “Yes, do not worry. I will do it. I will tell her tonight.”

  The cottage door creaked open. In came Tanya and Vera balancing the laundry basket between them. Another figure followed closely behind.

  Yevno glanced up, and a sudden tightness clutched at his throat.

  6

  Though the chill wind blustered in through the door, seizing every opportunity to drive out warmth wherever it could, Anna’s appearance radiated sunshine to the heart of her father.

  At sixteen, the girl was slight of figure, lithe and delicate like the feathery branches of the great willow under which she had recently been sitting. Her skin was pale, but her flaxen hair, covered now with a drab woolen scarf, offered some contrast with its effusion of tight, almost unmanageable, natural curls. She bemoaned the kinky mass sometimes, especially when the air turned damp. But her father thought the effect enchanting, even winsome, when all else seemed so plain about her. In addition to her hair, her eyes—large and brown and filled with wonder and lively curiosity—offset the rest of her quiet, unassuming demeanor. She possessed a nice smile, but usually it remained tentative and subdued, adding further subtlety to the overall effect.

  In her hand Anna carried a book—a worn, tattered, much read volume, with a title Yevno could not decipher with his illiterate eyes. In the library of a great St. Petersburg prince, his daughter would not have to read the same handful of books over and over again until their boards threatened to fall from the very body they enclosed.

  Even as this practical thought flitted through his mind, so too came a bittersweet memory of the snow child, and with it the reminder that the legendary maiden of winter had to leave her home in order to live. Had the same moment of sad destiny now come for his own daughter?

  “Hello, Papa,” said Anna as she closed the door behind her, a smile twitching the corners of her pale lips. Her voice was not loud, yet very clear—musical with the melody of a chilly and invigorating breeze rather than the sound of a cathedral choir. “And Mama . . . Pavushka . . . Ilya.”

  “You’ll catch your death sitting in the open for so long,” scolded Sophia, already forgetting her former sadness in the protective instinct to mother her baby chicks. “Could you not see a storm is coming?”

  “It was not so bad,” replied Anna mildly. “I love the smell of the approaching clouds. And soon I’ll have to give up my afternoon walks. The first snows are not far off. I must be outside now whenever I can.”

  “That’s what Reb Plotnick says,” put in Ilya.

  “He is seldom wrong, even if he is a Jew,” said Sophia without rancor—though mirroring the deeply ingrained prejudices the Orthodox Russians held toward nearly all others not of their faith. “And supper is on the way, too. So come, everyone.”

  That evening Yevno found himself lingering longer over his black bread and kasha, and the tea which followed, than mere hunger or weariness from his day’s trek would justify. Consciously or not, he was prolonging what he had resolved to do. He found himself wondering if it were pure foolishness to think a peasant girl could better herself as a servant to a great house. But one with Anna’s sensitivity and her keen intellect—it would be selfish of them not to give her the chance. St. Petersburg, after all, was not so far in these modern times—two hundred versta at most. If she was unhappy, she could return to them. The final decision would be completely hers.

  On that thought, Yevno took a deep breath and turned to his eldest daughter.

  “Anna, would you like to come help me see to the animals?” he asked. “I thought perhaps we could talk.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  Yevno bound his feet again quickly. The two wrapped themselves in their warmest coats and headed out into the icy wind, containing now and then a stray pellet of rain in advance of the coming clouds.

  It had been an inspiration to think of the animals. Somehow it seemed easier to tell her in the comforting presence of the old gray mare, Lukiv.

  7

  The first snows came early to the little Russian village of Katyk.

  November’s flurries, however, were not yet January’s blizzards, and the young girl traipsing idly along the country path did not appear out of place. Indeed, Anna seemed as carefree and content as had she been out for a stroll on a warm spring afternoon. She carried a worn volume of Pushkin’s poems in her hand, while her curls, uncovered, danced brilliantly in the winter sun.

  But if aimless in the movements of her hands an
d legs—stopping when it pleased her to gaze across the fields, or stooping to inspect some late flower pushing through the crust of frost or attempting to hang on to its tiny stunted blossom—her thoughts were by no means listless. Racing between her brain and heart were the entire gamut of emotions imaginable—from wide-eyed anticipation to nervous terror.

  This was her last day in Katyk, her final walk through the fields surrounding the simple, loving home of her parents, the only home she had ever known.

  She drew in a deep breath, then gazed all around her at the white countryside. After today, her eyes would behold this place no more. Perhaps for a very long time.

  Tomorrow she would climb onto the train that would take her north to St. Petersburg, to another existence, another world. She would still be called Anna. And inside she would still think of herself as a peasant girl of Katyk. Yet she could not prevent herself from thinking that after tomorrow everything except her name would change.

  Therein lay the fear—not so much of new people, new places, new duties, but rather the fear of what was to become of Anna, the simple daughter of Yevno and Sophia Burenin.

  Yet an expectant enthusiasm pulsed through her in almost equal proportion to the apprehension. She had felt a surge of excitement the moment her father had spoken to her in the stable two weeks ago.

  “Dear Anna,” Yevno had said softly that night, “we all knew this day would come sooner or later. All chicks must fly from the nest. But your old papa admits he is not ready for it.”

  His voice was soft, tender. Anna sensed he was struggling with tears. She did not look at him as he spoke.

  “Ah, my child . . . one small word from you, and I might be tempted to hang on to you longer, for another year or two, maybe even three. Yet . . .”

  He paused and took her two slim, pale hands into his large knobby paws. “I know it would be selfish of me to do so. I would be thinking only of my own desire to keep you, not of what is for your best.”

  “I am not eager to leave you or Mama either . . .”