Strange Are the Ways

by Strange Are the Ways (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  The Red Guards came to the apartment three days before Christmas.

  Volodya had obtained work in a factory in the Vyborg, as much to get a precious ration card as anything else. Despite the new Bolshevik ruling that no employee should be required to work for more than eight hours a day – a rule entirely disregarded by the committees and workers’ Soviets that had taken over the old private businesses – he spent long hours at the factory and came home exhausted. He was sitting in an armchair in the kitchen by the only stove in the apartment they could afford to light, his head nodding as Varya directed a barrage of complaints and grievances at his all but sleeping form. Nikki and ’Tasha were kneeling on chairs by the table doing a jigsaw puzzle. Small Stepan, quiet and withdrawn, sat upon the floor near the stove, hugging his cushion – now a little the worse for wear – and stared into space. Anna, sitting at the table with the other children to share the light from the one oil-lamp that was burning as she patched a pair of trousers for Nikki watched Stepan with troubled eyes. ‘Steppi? Do you want to come and help with the jigsaw?’

  Stepan did not raise his eyes to look at her. He shook his head. She sighed and went back to her mending. She had long since discovered that trying to force the child to join in with the activities of others did not work; for a quiet child he was capable of the most fearsome tantrums. She turned to the other two. ‘I thought perhaps we might go and see your mama tomorrow. We’ll take some of the potatoes Volodya bought. And I’ve a little honey that might help with the baby’s cough – what in the name of God is that?’

  The knocking on the door was thunderous. ‘Open up! Open up, there!’

  Volodya started awake, sitting bolt upright. The children had frozen, suddenly pale. Stepan buried his face in the grubby cushion.

  ‘I’ll – I’ll go,’ Anna said, unsteadily. ‘Stay here, children. Don’t worry –’

  The crashing came again. ‘Open up!’

  Varya whimpered.

  ‘It’s all right, Mama.’ As steadily as she could manage, Anna stood, laid her mending upon the table.

  Volodya followed her into the hall.

  A group of uniformed men stood at the door, bands of red about their arms and caps. They pushed in as soon as she turned the key. Beyond them Anna could see others, running up and down the wide staircase, banging on doors, putting shoulders and feet to those that were not immediately opened. Somewhere a woman was crying, a thin, pathetic whine of terror.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked, her voice shaking a little despite all her efforts.

  The leader of the group was a thin man with a face marred and pitted by the ravages of smallpox. He wore rimless glasses, behind which his eyes were pale and entirely devoid of warmth. ‘We’re requisitioning the building, comrade. You have ten minutes.’

  ‘You’re – what?’ She looked at him blankly. From the upstairs gallery came the sounds of violence; a man shouted angrily, a woman screamed.

  The cold eyes flicked to her and away again, dismissively. ‘We’re requisitioning the building. Removing it from the ownership of the criminal bourgeoisie. Property belongs to the people.’ His voice was completely expressionless. He walked to the drawing-room door, peered in. ‘You have ten minutes,’ he repeated, over his shoulder.

  ‘Ten minutes to what?’ Stunned by the suddenness of it, Anna’s brain was barely working. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Ten minutes to pack up and leave. You may take a suitcase each – we’ll search them, of course. No valuables; all property belongs to the people. To try to take more than purely personal possessions will be treated as theft.’

  From somewhere in the building came the sound of a crash, and then gunfire. The man did not bat an eyelid. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said.

  ‘But – we have children – an old lady – we can’t –’

  The chill, venomous eyes turned to her again. ‘Then you leave as you are,’ he said, calmly. ‘As I said. The building is requisitioned.’ He jerked his head at the men who accompanied him. They barged past Anna, almost knocking her from her feet. ‘Come. Hurry up.’

  A door crashed. Varya screamed. Anna could hear Stepan whimpering. Volodya, at a glance from Anna, left at a run. She turned back to the Red Guard. ‘The children?’ she asked, very quietly. ‘You’d turn the children out into the street, at this time of night, in these temperatures?’

  The marked face was unfriendly. ‘Bourgeois whelps,’ he said. ‘It will do them no harm to experience what others have had to experience before them.’

  There was no point in arguing; there was nothing to be done. All around them in the building was the sound of protest, the sound of destruction, of violence. The children must be kept safe at all costs. Head high, she walked past him. In the kitchen she joined the others. ‘Come, children, we must leave. ’Tasha, will you take the boys and help them pack? We’ll go to your mama. It will be all right – don’t worry. No-one will hurt you. Mama, I’ll pack a bag for you. Volodya, you’ll help Mama to prepare?’ Varya had not been out of the apartment for months; the simple task of heaving her to her feet and dressing her would take as long as the ten minutes they had been allowed.

  Anna hurried to the bedroom she shared with Volodya. Blessedly it was empty. With thundering heart she prised up the floorboard and reached into the hole for the small bag of gold coins that was their lifeline.

  Heavy footsteps sounded in the hallway.

  She laid the floorboard back, threw the rug over it.

  The door opened. ‘Comrade Vassalov says you must go.’ The young soldier could not have been more than eighteen years old. Very calmly Anna opened drawers, threw clothing, toiletries and a couple of precious books into a case, straightened to face him. ‘You should be ashamed,’ she said, quietly. ‘Does your mother know of the war you fight? A war against helpless women and children?’

  The boy flushed furiously, then caught her by the arm. ‘Get on!’ he said.

  The others were gathered in the hall. Small ’Tasha’s face was tearmarked. Upon the floor beside her lay the wreckage of Volodya’s violin, casually smashed to matchwood. Varya too was crying, tears running down her fat white cheeks and dripping from her chin. Her shoulders heaved. ‘Don’t make such a fuss, Grandma,’ one of the young soldiers said, uneasily. ‘You’ve somewhere to go, haven’t you?’

  ‘What’s it to you if she has or she hasn’t?’ Anna asked, tartly, her tamped-down anger rising. ‘What’s it to you if she freezes to death in the streets? She’s an enemy of the people, isn’t she? Look at her – you can see it.’

  ‘Enough.’ Vassalov pointed to the bags. ‘Search them.’

  The young soldier poked into the bags. Anna’s fingers closed over the small bag of coins in her pocket. The soldier snatched Stepan’s pillow. ‘What’s this?’

  The child shrieked, a sound of pure, agonized anger. ‘It’s mine! It’s mine!’

  Anna whirled and launched herself at the man who was about to tear open the pillow. ‘For God’s sake – it’s the child’s only possession!’

  The bag of coins fell to the floor with a chinking thud that drew all eyes.

  ‘Well, well,’ Vassalov said, stooping and sweeping the small bag into his hand. He straightened, weighing it in his palm, his eyes on Anna. She returned the look defiantly. The man smiled, and tucked the little bag into his greatcoat pocket, his eyes never leaving hers, daring her to challenge him.

  ‘Thief,’ she said, savagely quiet.

  His hand moved swiftly, the mark of it was on her cheek almost before she realized what was happening. She rocked on her heels; felt blood in her mouth.

  Volodya started forward. Anna put out a restraining hand.

  ‘No! It’s what he wants. Don’t give him the satisfaction.’

  Vassalov smiled. Stepped to the door and opened it with scornful courtesy. The rest of the building was shrouded in a sudden, ominous quiet. An elderly couple shuffled their way past the door and slowly and painfully down t
he wide staircase from which the luxurious carpet had long been looted.

  Anna slung one of the children’s bags upon her shoulder, picked up her own case, hitched Stepan’s slight weight upon her hip and led the way out of the Bourlov apartment, head high and without looking back. Knowing with a satisfaction that was as savage as any anger that at least the few but valuable pieces of jewellery that Mischa had given them were safely sewn into the tattered cushion that Stepan still clutched as if it were his only lifeline.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Natalia’s apartment was miserably overcrowded, but it was a roof, and at first that was enough.

  But not for long.

  Inevitably the stresses and strains of so many people living in three chill, cramped rooms in a city that seemed in the grip of a nightmare began to tell. The older children, used to the space of the Bourlov apartment, very quickly became fractious; they were fretful and quarrelsome. The adults’ nerves – especially the women’s, since Volodya at least had the doubtful advantage of going to the factory each day – were strung almost to breaking point. Despite Anna’s constant tramping the streets there was little food and less fuel; as a place to live the city of Petrograd had become all but unendurable. Anna was out at five each morning, often coming home empty-handed and frozen to the bone in the late afternoon. Varya complained constantly. The children fought amongst themselves, or occasionally joined forces to defy the adults. And worst of all, little Dmitri, deprived now even of the rest and quiet he needed, failed, visibly, before their eyes. The child lay in his mother’s arms, unmoving, his eyes lacklustre, his small face wizened and shrunken like that of an elderly monkey. Natalia nursed him for long hour by long hour whilst ’Tasha and Nikki squabbled and fought about her and Stepan huddled into a corner clutching his cushion and watching the world with confused and fear-filled eyes. With Volodya away all day it fell to Anna to attempt to cope with the everyday problems of running the apartment, with the temper and tantrums of her mother and the two older children alike, with Natalia’s fears and small Stepan’s terrors, as well as the arduous task of marketing. She sold the ruby ring and, accompanied often by ’Tasha, whose liveliness and quick temper were the usual cause of friction in the small household, she queued for hours in bitter cold for bread, for potatoes, for milk for the ailing Dmitri. There were other worries growing; with the Bolsheviks on the point of signing a separate peace treaty with the Germans, her British nationality as she had been warned was threatening to become more of a liability than a protection. Her contacts with the Embassy had, until recently, been quite open, and since an unsuccessful attempt upon Lenin’s life at the beginning of January the CHEKA was more active than ever. If the Bolsheviks started rounding up alien nationals they would have little trouble in finding her.

  The short, bitter days and the long dark nights passed in a miserable and anxious succession. A sense of hopelessness invested not just Anna and her small, struggling family, but, it seemed, the whole of the population of the city. Whilst the victorious revolutionaries still dashed about the streets in their requisitioned, flag-bedecked limousines and the Bolshevik grip on the government of the country became ever more vice-like, whilst officers, politicians and members of the old aristocracy, no matter how inoffensive, were arrested, imprisoned and often executed, their homes and palaces looted and wrecked, the ordinary people, as ever, froze and starved, the old and the young prey to disease and famine, their babies dying at the breast. They stood in line interminably for food and for fuel. They stoically saw their children die.

  ‘Why do we let it happen? What’s the matter with us? Why are we so – so damnably Russian?’ Anna asked one January night in despair. Exhaustedly she dropped her head into hands that were swollen and inflamed by chilblains. ‘Who has won and who has lost in this – glorious revolution?’ The last two words were spoken with a bitter emphasis. ‘The bad old Russia is dead, they tell us – but what does the new have to put in its place? The same chains, but of a different colour! The same tyranny! The same terror! How much more say do any of us have in our own lives? What great freedoms have we achieved by all this bloodshed and upheaval? None! And still we shuffle from queue to queue, grateful for a crust here, a handful of kindling there! Still the weak suffer and die as we stand and watch! A new repression has taken over from the old and we can do nothing about it! Nothing! I hate it all! Oh, how I hate it!’ Tired and overwrought, at last entirely unable to control herself, she burst into a sudden passion of tears.

  Varya and Natalia watched her in silence, taken aback by the outburst from one who had until now, of all of them, been a mainstay of strength and relative good-humour. Dmitri slept, as always, in his mother’s arms, his breathing difficult. The other children were tumbled like sleeping puppies upon a mattress in the far corner of the room: the unheated bedrooms were too cold to use.

  Volodya came to Anna, put a quietening hand upon her shoulder. Her hold upon her strained emotions vanquished, she was sobbing unrestrainedly into her hands, repeating the same phrase over and over, like a tired and confused child, the words too broken by tears to be clearly heard. Gently he reached to her, held her to him. She could feel the stark bones of him through the rough material of his shirt, the calluses on his craftsman’s hands.

  She quietened. Sniffed. Pulled away from him to knuckle her eyes, shamefaced. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What were you saying, Anna?’ he asked, very softly, after a moment.

  She glanced at him then looked away, shaking her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing! I’m tired, that’s all – so very tired!’

  ‘Tell me, Anna.’ He was quietly persistent. ‘Tell me! What were you saying?’

  Her mouth set in a miserable, stubborn line. She shook her head.

  He caught her shoulder, shook her a little. ‘Anna! Say it!’

  Her fragile hold upon herself broke once more. She glared at him through tears. ‘I said, I want to go home!’ she shouted, appalled to hear the words, entirely incapable of stopping herself. ‘I said, I hate it here! I want to go home! Home – you hear me! Home!’ She stopped, her hand to her mouth, anguished. One of the children stirred, and was still.

  The words had fallen into a sudden, deathly silence. Varya’s face closed like a trap, her eyes narrowed upon her daughter. Natalia glanced at the children asleep in the corner, then looked down at the sleeping Dmitri, rocked him a little, gently.

  Volodya sat back on his heels with a quick, small breath. The silence was absolute.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Anna said. ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry – I didn’t mean it – I didn’t! You shouldn’t have made me say it! It’s only that I’m so tired –’

  ‘Of course you are. We all are,’ Volodya said, mildly. ‘And you did mean it. Of course you did – why shouldn’t you? You have a life, a good life, waiting for you in England. The longer you leave it the harder it will be to get out of the country. Sooner rather than later now you’ll have to leave. We all understand that.’

  Anna stared at him.

  ‘You’ve done everything you could. Everything anyone could possibly have expected of you. But things have changed. Now –’ He turned a little away from her, his face schooled against pain. He had waited and watched for this moment. No weakness of his must be allowed to hinder his plans for Anna, ‘– now, truly, there is little more you can do. You’re just another mouth to feed – you, and Steppi.’ He sensed her sudden movement, brought his eyes back to hers. ‘You do want to take the child with you, don’t you?’

  She was watching him in astonishment. ‘Yes,’ she said, faintly. ‘Yes, of course I do. If it’s possible.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ he said, quietly. ‘There are ways. And we’re luckier than most – we have the contact with Katya and Jussi in Helsinki.’

  ‘Never!’ Varya heaved herself upright in her chair, sitting straight as a ramrod, her eyes fierce with anger and with fear. ‘You’d desert us, Anna? Now? You’d leave us to fend for ourselves, helpless as we are? You should b
e shamed to think it! If you can go – and the child – why can’t we all?’

  Anna bowed her head, the small flame of hope that had been kindled by Volodya’s calm words snuffing out like a blown match, leaving darkness. ‘Mama, I’m sorry – you’re right, of course.’

  ‘No,’ Volodya said, quietly but in a voice that held an edge of steel. He looked at Varya.

  The light of the single lamp shone upon her white, bloated face. Beside herself with rage and terror she glared back at him defiantly. ‘Anna has no right –’ she began.

  ‘Anna has every right,’ he interrupted very firmly. ‘Anna had every right to stay safely in England in the first place; but she didn’t. She had every right to run like a rabbit at the first sign of trouble – but she didn’t do that, either. She could have left us at any time, no-one could have blamed her, but she didn’t. Not while she thought she could help. We all owe her more than we can ever repay.’ He kept his eyes pointedly upon Varya. ‘Now the situation has changed. She can no longer help us. Worse; whilst she stays in the city her British nationality is likely to become a positive danger to her. And through her to us. If there’s a possibility that she can leave, and young Stepan with her – and I know there is, for I have already made –’ with one wary eye on Anna’s astounded face he hesitated upon the word ‘arrangements’ ‘– enquiries – then she should go. In God’s good name!’ Abruptly he flung his hands wide in a sudden, angrily helpless gesture. ‘Someone should survive this shambles and attempt to be happy!’