Strange Are the Ways

by Strange Are the Ways (retail) (epub)

  Not all the tram services had been reinstated. It took them nearly an hour to reach Natalia’s apartment on the far side of the river, on the outer edges of the working-class area of the city.

  When the door of the apartment opened Anna found herself staring at the girl who surely must be her sister-in-law in dismay. She had not expected Natalia to be unchanged; who in heaven’s name was? But never had she been prepared for this.

  The emaciated, brown-haired woman looked from one to the other, her expression blank, and a little hostile. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Natalia?’ Anna asked, doubtful despite herself.

  Natalia peered at her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and painful-looking. Some small recognition flickered in her tired face. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It’s Anna. Natalia – Anna! Dima’s sister,’ she added in desperation as those abstracted, red-rimmed eyes still showed sign neither of warmth nor of welcome.

  ‘Anna,’ Natalia said. She frowned a little, as if in concentration. Behind her Anna could see two children, hovering, hands clasped, as still and as tense as was their mother. The older was a girl with a mop of fair curls that clustered lank and greasy about her face. The boy was small, dark and timid, looking the very image of Anna’s brother as she remembered him as a child.

  She tried again. ‘Natalia, it’s me, it’s truly Anna,’ she repeated, very quietly. ‘I’ve come –’ She hesitated, unsure of what to say in face of this strange, passive unsurprise. ‘Look, please – mayn’t we come in? Then I can explain.’

  A small grimace, that might have been an attempt at a smile, flickered upon the all but skeletal face. Natalia stepped back. ‘Anna!’ she said. ‘Of course. Goodness me, what a surprise! Come in.’

  As they stepped forward the little boy drew back, fearfully. His sister, holding his hand, hauled him back again to stand beside her. She was watching the strangers with a wary interest, laced well with suspicion.

  ‘You must be Natasha?’ Anna asked, gently. ‘And this is Nicholai?’

  The child did not answer, but glanced at her mother.

  Natalia appeared to have recovered herself a little. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘’Tasha – Nikki – this is your Aunt Anna.’

  Still they said nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Natalia waved a bony, distracted hand. ‘They see so few people, I’m afraid their manners are not of the best.’

  ‘Aunt Anna,’ ’Tasha said, suddenly daring, ’you sent us letters. From –’ she thought for a moment, frowning ‘– from England.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Anna smiled. The child, still wary, smiled back. Anna turned back to Natalia. ‘You remember Volodya, who has been running the workshop for Mama?’

  ‘I – yes, I do, I think. But Anna, how in the world?’ Natalia stopped, stiffening. From the inner room came a small sound, the barest breath. ‘The baby!’ she said, and lifting her drab skirts fairly flew to the door, leaving her guests where they stood.

  Anna and Volodya exchanged glances.

  ‘It’s the baby,’ ’Tasha explained, solemnly, as if that were all that needed to be said.

  From within the inner room came the soft whisper of mother to child, ‘There, there, my darling, my dearest little one. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, precious one. You know how it distresses Mama if you cry –’

  ‘You’d better come in,’ ’Tasha said, with practical clarity, and led the way.

  The room was uncomfortably warm, ill-furnished and as neat and clean as a prison cell. In one corner were two pallet beds and a cot, in another a table, upon which bubbled a cheap samovar, and two chairs. In the third corner was an altar; at least that was what Anna supposed it to be until she saw that it was actually a small table surmounted by a shelf upon which stood rank upon rank of photographs, all draped or ribboned in black, and all of the same subject. The largest stood in pride of place in the centre of the table; Dmitri in his uniform, stiffly and awkwardly posed, his face set in an expression of wooden and unsmiling severity. Before the icon that was set above the table a tiny flame glimmered. Two very battered armchairs were set beside the stove.

  Natalia, holding her shawl-wrapped child, turned to greet them. ‘Please, do come in. I’m sorry, I’ve little to offer I’m afraid. But ’Tasha will make tea – well, what passes for tea these days.’

  The little girl was already busying herself at the table.

  The child in Natalia’s arms lay against her shoulder, hardly moving. Natalia held him gently, rocking him as she moved. ‘Please, do sit down.’

  Anna and her companion lowered themselves into the battered armchairs.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve had to burn most of the furniture,’ Natalia said with perfect calm. ‘It’s Dimochka, you see. He isn’t strong. He must be kept warm. I find it impossible to heat more than one room, so we live in here, as you can see.’

  Anna accepted tea in a chipped glass from the solemn ’Tasha. ‘Natalia - that’s what we’ve come about. Mama is living in the Bourlov apartment on the Fontanka. There’s plenty of room, and it’s very comfortable – and it would be much easier if we were all together, to take turns to go out to buy food. Please, Natalia – come and stay with us for a while?’ Her eager words trailed to nothing.

  Natalia was shaking her head, very firmly. ‘I’m sorry, Anna, no. We couldn’t possibly do that. ’Tasha, pour some tea for me into the tin mug, please, that’s a good girl.’

  The little girl, who had been standing watching and listening with an expression of such eager intentness that it took a moment for her mother’s words to register, threw one swift pleading glance at Anna then trotted back to the table.

  ‘But Natalia, in heaven’s name, why? You’d be so much better off with us –’

  ‘No.’ The word was adamant. ‘I told you, Anna. We can’t.’

  ‘But why ever not?’

  Natalia was fussing with the baby, who Anna now saw was in fact a child of more than a year old; he mewed a little, unhappily, as his mother settled him upon her lap. ‘It’s not possible,’ Natalia said, ‘in case Dmitri comes.’

  There was a moment’s difficult silence.

  ‘Natalia –’ Anna began.

  The haggard face lifted. Dull brown eyes looked suddenly fiercely into Anna’s. ‘He might,’ Natalia said, a small defiance in her voice, ‘Anna, he might! I know what you’re thinking, but we don’t know for certain that he’s dead, do we? There was no – no body. No funeral. No end to it, you see. And strange things happen in war. Mistakes are made. Mistakes are often made. Others have turned up, you know. The boy upstairs – he came back, long after his parents had been told he was dead.’

  ‘Natalia, it’s been nearly eighteen months!’

  ‘He might,’ she said again, stubbornly. ‘I don’t know that he’s dead. Don’t you think I’d know? Know in my heart – if he were dead? No. We have to stay here. In case Dima comes.’

  ‘Mama,’ little ’Tasha said, pleadingly.

  ‘No, ’Tasha.’ Her mother did not even look at her, her attention wholly upon the child on her lap. ‘We stay here. Or Papa won’t know where to find us.’

  Anna exchanged a glance with Volodya. Very slightly he shrugged, shook his head.

  ‘He’ll come to see his little Dimochka,’ Natalia said, very quietly. ‘You see if he doesn’t. And then the poor little fellow will brighten up, won’t you, my lamb? Now,’ she turned, bizarrely brightly, to Anna, as if they were exchanging pleasantries across tea and cakes in Varya’s parlour, ‘do tell me – what in the world are you doing here? Your last letter reached us, oh, it must be a year or so ago –’

  Volodya tried once more. ‘Might it not be better for the little chap to be in the Fontanka apartment with us?’ he asked. ‘There’d be others to help you care for him.’

  Natalia cast him a look of patient dismissal. ‘No,’ she said, firmly. ‘Thank you. Now, Anna?’

  They stayed for perhaps an hour before, with darkness falling, they took their leave. To Anna’s last plea that she accomp
any them, or at least think about it, Natalia simply shook her head again. ‘I told you. We have to stay. We have to be here if he comes.’

  ‘You could – you could leave a note – a message –’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Anna. Do you think that if we left this apartment, poor as it must seem to you, it would stay empty for as much as a day? Folk have a nose for such things. There’d be two or three families in here at the shake of a lamb’s tail. And what would happen to my message then? No. We must stay.’

  * * *

  ‘At least she accepted the money,’ Anna said later, a little gloomily, as they trudged through the darkening, snowy streets. ‘That’s something, I suppose.’

  Volodya took her arm, helping her across the wide, icy pavement of the bridge. Beneath them the snow-shrouded river gleamed in the fast failing light. Ahead of them was the Winter Palace; over it, a sight still to amaze, streamed a huge red flag. In the great open space of the Palace Square soldiers drilled and columns of trucks and lorries lumbered through the snow. A detachment of Cossacks, red pennants flying, trotted past them over the bridge.

  ‘I’ll see if I can get some supplies to them,’ Volodya said.

  ‘That’s kind. Thank you.’

  Something in her tone drew his glance sharply to her face. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She shrugged, dispiritedly, then none too successfully glanced a small smile at him. ‘An unworthy attack of self-pity, I’m afraid,’ she admitted. ‘I came with such very good intentions, but – apart from Mama, I suppose – what good am I doing? It doesn’t really seem to matter if I stay or go, does it?’

  His hand was still firmly upon her elbow. Surprisingly steadily despite his limp he steered her past a group of rowdy young men and back onto the pavement. His words were lost in their noisy laughter.

  She turned her head. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I said “It matters to me”,’ he said, smiling, and bent lightly to kiss her cheek, his lips cool and undemanding against her skin, before once again he took her arm and resumed his brisk, uneven step. ‘That’s the second time I’ve said it. I think.’ He gave another small, shyly amused smile.

  Taken utterly by surprise she stumbled a little.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘I suppose I shouldn’t have done that.’

  Her breath came back and she laughed a little, shrugging, her depression lifting. ‘I don’t actually see why not,’ she said, after a moment.

  The rest of the journey was completed in a thoughtful and companionable silence.

  In bed that night, wrapped against the cold, her feet snug against a stone hot-water bottle, she remembered that kiss in those last, dreamily quiet moments before she slept. It had been a kindly gesture. But then Volodya was a kindly man. A very kindly man indeed. And he liked her; she knew it. ‘It matters to me,’ he had said. Twice. She smiled to herself in the darkness, warm and on the edge of sleep.

  She woke up in blind panic to the absolute certainty that someone was in the room.

  She lay rigid, listening, frightened half to death. It came again; the creak of a floorboard, and with it a breath of icy air from an open window. Petrified, she stared into the darkness; felt rather than saw the shadow that loomed above her. Before she could draw her fear-shackled breath to scream a hand had clamped hard upon her mouth. ‘It’s all right! Please, it’s all right! I won’t hurt you, I promise. Just don’t scream – please don’t scream.’ The voice, low and urgent, close to her ear was as familiar as her own father’s had been. Terror fled. She stopped struggling, lay still beneath the strong hand. The light of a small torch brightened the gloom and flickered to her face. ‘Anna!’ her uncle gasped. ‘Holy Mother! Anna! Of all people! What in the name of God are you doing here?’

  She sat up. ‘Uncle Mischa!’ she said. ‘Oh, dear Uncle Mischa!’ She flung her arms about his neck, buried her face in the strong warmth of his shoulder. He held her very tightly, his cheek resting upon her tousled hair.

  ‘Little Anna!’ he said, gently. ‘Hush, darling, I didn’t mean to frighten you. But the key wouldn’t work. I had to find a way in – your window was the easiest.’

  ‘We changed the lock,’ she whispered, her voice hoarse, and muffled by his heavy coat. ‘Volodya did it. After the soldiers came. They broke the door down –’

  He drew back, holding her still by the shoulders, looking at her sombrely in the faint light of the torch. ‘Soldiers? There have been soldiers here?’

  ‘Yes. A few days ago. Looking for you.’

  ‘Ah.’ His hands dropped from her shoulders. He rubbed a hand tiredly across his eyes. ‘I thought that might be the case.’

  ‘Uncle Mischa, you can’t stay! They’re hunting for you! They called you – an enemy of the people.’

  He laughed a little, grimly, at that. ‘Bloody right they are too, if they count themselves the people,’ he said, and his voice, though muted, was as she had always known it, confident and glimmering with humour. He stood up, tall in the darkness. ‘Anna my dear, you’re right. I can’t stay. In fact I didn’t intend to. Had my key worked I would have been here and gone with no-one any the wiser. I’m sorry to have given you a fright. Sorrier still that there’s little time to talk. There’s something I’ve come to collect, then I must go.’

  ‘Where?’ She was scrambling from bed as she talked, throwing her heavy woollen bedgown around her shoulders. ‘Where are you going? What have you come for? Can I help?’

  ‘Oh, Anna.’ There was an undisguised catch in his voice as he held his arms open to her once more. ‘How the sight of you – the sound of your voice – takes me back! You and my little Katya, what an irresistible pair you made. How very serious you were, how grave! And how disgracefully light-minded my charming Katya!’ There was the smallest of silences. Mischa swallowed, audibly. ‘She loved you dearly, you know. As a sister; though the little devil may never have shown it. She’ll be so pleased to know that I’ve –’ He stopped abruptly.

  ‘Katya?’ she asked, swiftly. ‘You’re going to Katya? Oh, Uncle Mischa – how is she? And her little boy? I was so sorry to hear about Jussi’s accident.’

  Her uncle lifted helpless hands, spoke in a rapid whisper. ‘Anna, there’s so much to tell and no time to tell it. Listen, I have a minute only. One thing I can tell you. Jussi isn’t dead. Ssh!’ He lifted a sharp finger at her exclamation. ‘He was badly injured. Crippled. But they’re together again, in Helsinki. You’ve heard of the trouble in Finland?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘They’re involved in it. Heavily involved. I can say no more than that. And they have a route out of the country, via Sweden.’

  ‘That’s where you’re going?’

  ‘Yes. To England, perhaps, or America. There’s no place for me here now.’ His voice held an edge of bitterness. ‘Anna, I don’t know what you’re doing here, and I haven’t time to find out, but take my advice and get out whilst you can. The trouble has only just begun, believe me. If you stay you’ll suffer for it. Tell me – you aren’t alone here?’

  ‘No. Mama is here, and Volodya, who used to run the shop for her –’

  He glanced at her sharply. ‘Don’t let them hold you, Anna, don’t let any of them hold you. Take your practical uncle’s advice; get out while you can. Now, I’ll fetch what I came for and then, Annoushka, perhaps you’ll let your old uncle out of the front door to prevent him breaking a leg, or worse, in an undignified scramble down the drainpipe that in desperation got him up here!’

  He was walking quietly to the door. Her bare feet already chilled to the bone, Anna followed. ‘Uncle Mischa – the soldiers – they took everything!’

  In the light of the torch he carried she saw the faint shake of his head, sensed his smile. ‘We’ll see, shall we?’

  He led the way into the ballroom. She felt his anger as the tiny beam of the torch played upon the destruction. ‘We cleared it as best we could,’ she said, almost apologetically.

  He did not re
ply, but strode towards the far wall, played the torch upon the ornate, smashed mirrors, counting under his breath. ‘One – two – there, the third –’ He moved swiftly to a mirror, which was cracked from top to bottom, ran his hands deftly along the ornate frame. ‘Ah!’ There came a tiny click, and a whirring sound. A panel next to the mirror slid open revealing a small, solid door set into the wall. Mischa had a key in his hand. He glanced over his shoulder, smiling at Anna’s surprised face, before he opened the concealed safe.

  Perhaps five minutes later she escorted him to the front door and opened it cautiously. The building towered about them in utter silence, the stairwell was dark and still. ‘Uncle Mischa – please be careful.’

  ‘I will, my Anna – you know I will. Don’t worry.’ Mischa was carrying the small yet bulky linen bag he had taken from the safe. At the open door he stopped, fumbling with the cord that tied it. ‘Anna, take this – you might need it.’

  ‘It’s all right, Uncle. I have plenty of money, I promise you.’

  ‘It’s good to have money,’ he said. ‘It’s even better to have insurance. Take it. And Anna, remember what I said: get out before things get any worse.’

  She did not reply to that, but let him thrust several small objects into her hand, clung to him as he engulfed her in a bear hug that said more than words. As he turned to go she touched his arm. ‘Uncle Mischa – give all my love to Katya.’

  ‘I will, my dear. Be sure I will.’

  For a big man he moved extraordinarily quietly. He was gone before she knew it, and the stairwell was empty. She closed the door silently, stood for a moment listening. The apartment, for all its sleeping occupants, seemed with Mischa’s going to be cold, dark and utterly empty. Not wanting to wake the others, she groped her way back to her icebox of a bedroom, closed the door and lit the tiny night-lamp she kept by her bed. Leaning to it, she opened her clenched hand. Lying in the palm were three items of jewellery; an ornate ring, set with rubies, a pendant of gold and gleaming sapphire, and a brooch, a magnificent thing of gold and aquamarine set within a bed of diamonds whose skilfully cut facets reflected the feeble rays of the lamp in dazzling – and valuable – fire.