by Janet Fitch
But then the door opened, and sun splashed the aperture. Dawn, and with it the horrible midwife. She stepped between me and tender Death. No! But my savior, the Dark Virgin, retreated into the shadows. And this old woman blazed in the doorway, blazed like sun on Scythian armor. “How is she?”
The daughter shook her head.
“I was afraid of that. Go get your sister.” The old warrior lowered herself to the bench next to me, her hand on my brow, so ugly and mean compared with my golden Virgin. She wiped my face with cool water. “This has gone on long enough, don’t you think?” she said to me.
I would have laughed if I’d had an atom of life left in me.
She held out a glass with some tea. “This will make it go faster.” She propped me up, held the rim to my lips, helped me drink. Bitter. I drank it all. Anything that might kill me faster. She let me lie back down. “Sleep a little now.”
I dozed for a while, praying for the figure in black to return and fold me into her cloak of night, for this all to be over.
All at once, my body, this tormented forked thing, began to convulse, a pain such as I had not yet known, a pain that bowed me back like a bridge, and it—I—emitted a scream that should have brought the hut down in a pile around us.
The old woman laughed with diabolical pleasure. She really did hate me. How she loved my screaming. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” While my body seized again. Once again I was possessed by raging life, plunged into this battle. They flogged them with iron rods until the flesh fell from their bodies…
“Now you’re going to work, my girl.” No retreat without orders. “Scream all you want, Bolshevik.”
I twisted, I writhed in her arms, I tried to get away from her, but she was as strong as five men. My body split open like a great door pushing aside the rust of the ages, like the earth cracking open in a terrible quake. The sorrowful Mother of God, hovering in the shadows, disappeared, abandoning me to this hellish old crone. “Are you ready to have this baby?”
The pain was tearing me open the way a cook dismembers a chicken, and I emitted the high yelps of a half-killed beast. The midwife held me from behind on the bench, the blue daughter before me, massaging my legs. A bedspring of iron screwed its way through me. No, no, no…
“Oh yes,” grunted the old lady. “Say yes!”
But I could only howl.
The door opened, the bright morning like knives in my eyes. “Getting close?”
“Shut the door!” the midwife shouted as a giant burst of pain tore through me. “She screams like the devil. Pray, devushka! Mother of God, save us. Holy Mother, All-Preserving Queen…”
“It’s coming,” said the red daughter, kneeling.
“There you go, Bolshevik,” the witch gloated. “You thought you’d outfoxed us, didn’t you?”
I wept. “I can’t…I can’t!”
“It’s coming! The head! I see it! The hair. It’s a redhead!”
“Push!” commanded my tormentor. Sitting behind me, her arms under mine, bracing my back.
I didn’t care about the pain now. I didn’t care if I died. I didn’t care if I ripped my body loose from my body to trail behind me like a sheep torn open by a wolf. I leaned back against the old woman and turned myself inside out.
“Here it comes!”
“No, wait! Something’s wrong!” A hand on my thigh.
“Holy Mother of God, what now?” spat the witch. “Take her!” She handed me off to one of her moons. “Stop pushing, you. Stop it. Turn over.” She thrust me down on the straw, on my knees, my head in the red lap, fingers up inside me, digging—was she going to pull the child out of me like a goat? The flat of a hand on my back, the way you’d steady a horse. “I’ve got it! Yes, now.”
Suddenly, arms lifted me to the birthing stool, where I squatted as they held me, pushing my life out.
And a wet
hot
weight
fell
between my thighs.
Blood slick, the twisted gleaming cord still attached.
A girl, alive.
Eyes open, as green as grass. Full head of hair.
Laughter welled inside me like a spring.
“Look, she’s looking at you.”
Staring at me in wonder. She wasn’t even crying! And how beautiful she was, my daughter! Eyes, upturned at the corners, just like his! Her mouth a little bow, her big cat’s eyes. What a beauty, krasavitsa. No redness, no swollenness, after all that. Nothing was as I’d imagined. It was uncanny the way she examined my face, with such surprise! So this is the world, she seemed to say. The air we breathed in her little lungs. “She’s not even crying.”
“Oh, she’ll be crying plenty,” said the midwife. “So much trouble for such a little nub.” She wiped her forehead on the back of her arm. “I’ve never worked harder in my life.”
They wrapped the cord in a piece of red embroidery thread and bit it off, wiped her, put her into my arms in a clean dish towel.
“I could have a kid like that in my sleep,” said the red daughter.
“Look at those eyes.”
My child, staring at me in wonder. As if I were the miracle.
“The shoulder got stuck,” explained the blue daughter.
“Never thought that’d be over. Is there tea?” said the red one, stretching, cracking her spine.
She weighed nothing in my arms, as light as a rabbit. My daughter! Suddenly she opened her tiny mouth and began to wail. Not a full-lunged baby’s scream, more a high creak like a cat’s cry. “No, no, please don’t cry, baby.” It pierced me, that tiny high needle of a sound. My child. My sweet disaster. What was I doing wrong? She was as hot as a biscuit. That little mouth, and the bright flame of red hair. Did she not like me? I was crying too.
“What’s her name, milaya?” said the blue daughter.
“Iskra.” My voice was sanded to a whisper. Spark.
“It just was the feast of Alexander and Antonina,” said the midwife, holding a cup to my lips. “How about Alexandra?”
The milk was sour now. I turned my face away. “No.”
Another round face swam into view, the red sister. “You can’t call a Bolshevik Alexandra.” It was the tsarina’s name.
The midwife crossed herself. “May God keep her.”
“Antonina, then,” said the blue one. “Look, Tonya, there’s titty.” And put her on my steaming, rock-hard breast. I struggled to stay awake. Her name was Iskra, not some saint they’d just pulled out of a bag! I thought I was shouting, but they couldn’t hear me at all.
“At least they can’t say we killed the girl,” I heard the midwife say. “Theotokos be praised.”
Her name is Iskra. But I was too tired to argue, I couldn’t stay awake. My red-haired baby, my Iskra, my Spark.
11 Iskra
We led our camels, our lop-eared goats, across the dry, hard red plains. Red dust in our hair, in our mouths. Loose shale slid and clacked underfoot on the paths, the sound of the camels’ bells purer than water. Our small band of Ionians—Ilya, Anna, Bogdan, Lilya. The skins of water shifted on the saddles, dry bread in our packs, dates. The sun ate up half the sky. Tam! There! The red sandstone walls of a great city loomed, blue domed, with massive iron gates, the Master’s walled citadel. I knew it instantly. In the center, the Tower, like a giant rook in chess. But he never said how small we’d feel standing before its gates in our rags and coating of red dust, the goats bleating, the sun pounding down like a fist. I couldn’t even reach the rope to pull the great bell. How long would they leave us to stand here? We beat on the doors, cried out, but our puny fists made no sound on the enormous gates, and there were no guards to hear us.
I saw a small door, hidden in the large one like a cupboard door—no handle, not even a keyhole. Yet it must open somehow. I began knocking on it in a secret pattern I remembered seeing in Ukashin’s papers in his kabinyet. It was the knight’s move—up two, one across. Untie, unloose the knots and chains…I whispered to it,
and the door gave way, and cool air streamed out.
The way was too small for the camels. We’d have to leave them, and all our cargo but what we could carry. I slung a bag over my shoulder, filled it with the most precious things, bangles and little statues, but the others refused to leave the camels behind. Who cared about the camels? Didn’t they want to enter the city?
“Don’t go,” Anna wept. Ilya, angry, turned away.
We’d come all this way! I would not stay outside, even if I had to go in there alone. I left my companions behind and entered the red city.
It was a maze of alleys. Women in veils whispered to me as I passed, but I couldn’t understand them. They were telling me how to go, warnings, important things, but I had no time. I was late. The narrow streets turned and turned again, you couldn’t see more than a few houses at a time. Would I ever find my way?
Suddenly I found myself at the square, the heart of the city. Around the red Tower lay the largest bazaar in the world. Rugs, living pictures, exotic birds, perfumes, spices, fakirs and beggars and wonder-workers of every description. A fire-eater spat flames, a woman wore a cobra like a shawl. On a street of jewelers and coppersmiths, I found a stall selling enamelwork and knew this to be my destination.
Enameled trays, tables, basins large enough to lie down in crowded the dark coolness of the shop. A long-bearded merchant waited on a cushion, smoking a hookah, but he didn’t fool me. I knew the Master when I saw him. “What have you brought me?” he asked. I opened my satchel to show him my treasures, but it was empty. Everything had fallen out. All it contained was a thin stream of red dust.
“Look, she’s coming around.”
A clammy rag wiped my forehead, my neck, blue eyes peered, moon faces, yellow braids. A cup to my desert-parched lips. Church bells rang. Light through curtained windows. Where was my baby? “The baby!” I whispered through parched lips. My breasts on fire.
“She’s sleeping. Drink.” The cup again. Tea, some kind of potion. They began to sing…and sleep bore me away.
Crows calling. A priest dressed in black swung a censer. The sound of pure cold water. Oh God, I was dead. I hadn’t made it after all. Light spilled across its wide waxed floors. It all smelled of beeswax, and bees droned outside. Honey in the walls. The grandfather clock stood in the hall. It struck the hour.
As I stood in the doorway a girl came to my side. Graceful and slim, in a white nightgown, barefoot, her red hair braided in loops as they’d done in Pushkin’s day. Iskra! She was alive! But I’d missed her childhood. She was already fifteen. “This is all yours,” I said. Mother out in the garden in a white dress, walking among the Queen Anne’s lace. Maryino! Grandmère at the piano. I thought the house had burned, but here it was, and we were all here! On the lawn, Seryozha reclined in a lawn chair, his bright hair gold in the sun, in his white sailor’s suit. He was doing something with his hands. He turned them over and showed me.
Cat’s cradle.
I backed away and knocked over a lamp. The rug caught, the curtains. It lit her nightgown. Stop, Iskra! But she ran out through the yard, aflame, toward the woman in white.
“No, devushka. Shh…” The midwife.
I fought her off. There was something in her face. Lies painted her brow. “Where’s my baby? What did you do with her?”
“She wants the child.” Her daughters, the blue and the red.
“Where is she?” I was up on my feet, running around the small room. “Where have you put my baby? What have you done with her?”
“She was sick, milaya.”
“A tiny thing.”
I struggled against their big bodies, the hot arms they were wrapping me in.
“She wasn’t very strong.”
“We put her in the stove.”
“NO!” I shrieked and ran to the oven, still warm from the morning’s baking. I opened the door and there she was, like a loaf of fine white bread, wrapped in a bit of blue calico. Her eyes closed. I ripped the calico off her. She was even tinier than I remembered…The midwife and her witches tried to pull me away. I flung them across the room, tuned out their jabbering, the cawing of crows. I held the tiny limp body to my fevered throat, no bigger than a squirrel. Opened her mouth, breathed fire into her. Breathed and turned her over, pressing her with my hot palms. I became a bright ball of fire, hotter, hotter. Come, Iskra. Closer. I felt her hovering now, close, very close, a little tremor, like fast-beating wings.
“She’s gone, milaya. You have to stop.”
I roughly elbowed her aside, gathered every last inch of myself and hurled myself into my child the way Ukashin did when he wanted to get our attention, the way he’d taught me.
Felt a twitch. A flinch. As when a sleeper falls in his dream. Was it me or was it her? “You saw that,” I shouted at the witches. Blank moon faces.
Again, like a live star.
And she jerked. She trembled, she shook, her little arms shot out, her hands tensed into fists. A little cat’s cough, and then—her mouth opened, and out came a high thin cry. I gazed down into her outraged face growing red, pressed her to my aching breasts, and laughed the way the midwife had laughed when I said I couldn’t bear it anymore, and she told me she would not let me go. Iskra was mine. I’d scorch the earth for her, until Death himself gave her up.
They fell to their knees in the straw, praying. Thanking the Virgin. Touching me, touching the child. I nestled my crying baby’s head under my jaw. She smelled of sweet grass and, ever so slightly, of smoke.
12 Antonina
I woke to white curtains blowing in an open window carrying the songs of village women. Was this the hymn I’d heard? Then I realized—the baby! Where was my baby? I shot up to find myself no longer on a bench in the bathhouse but in a peasant izba, ancient and smelling strongly of medicinal herbs. My heart beat wildly until I saw the cradle hanging from the rafters before the stove, like in Faina’s hut. Wobbly-legged, I hauled myself up, my torn body burning, leaking, but she was alive, alive, snugged inside the tiny hammock. With those delicate features, so sweet, so perfect—the glossy eyelids, the ginger hair, the slight snore. She was snoring! The most miraculous snore the world has ever heard. They had her swaddled up tight in a dish towel—the flush of her cheeks, her moist curls—and her lips were moving. She was saying something in her sleep. Oh, if only I could hear what she was saying. She still remembered the other place, the world she had lived in before she came here. What are you dreaming, my love?
I put my hand on the big stove. Stone cold. But I knew I had saved her, snatched her from Death itself. The tiny aperture of her nostrils was enough to make me weep. I felt dizzy, I had to lie down now, but I needed my baby. Steeling myself for her shrieks, I scooped her up out of the cradle. So light in my arms. She protested, one short mewl, then settled. So warm, and smelling of bread.
Through the open windows, a breeze carried the scent of fields and the jamlike sweetness of the pines. The fight was over. I held my child and gingerly lay down on the bench. I thought of that empty sack, the emptiness of my being, but it wasn’t so. I had saved her. She was here. The izba’s ancient rough-planed logs reminded me of the midwife. Her shelves sagged with jars and crocks, herbs drying upside down. And on the breeze came that angelic song again…This must have been the choir I’d heard and thought it was church.
Iskra’s lips were moving. I turned my ear to her, seeing if I could overhear her secrets, but she gave up nothing. The wonder of her—her breath, her golden eyelashes, her bowed lips, her beating heart. I hadn’t known how ferociously I would love a child. I lay with her nestled in the curve of my body, wrapping myself around her. It was so hot, why did they wrap her like that? But I was afraid of waking her.
For the rest of our lives, this creature and I would know one another. It was almost impossible to take in the reality of that. First you were one, then you were two. Crazy, when I was no different from the woman they delivered to the midwife, carried off the train, fellow-traveler and nuisance. And now, m
other. This body, with bursting breasts and torn loins, where was the I of me now? There is no you, the body said. Only me. This body, these breasts, my flaccid belly—hot, weeping, empty and full, it belonged more to Nature than to myself. You could say there was no me, ultimately, only this body, and its primal urge to make other bodies. Like the Cosmic Egg—first there was nothing, and then desire.
I had to pee. I needed to get up but wanted to stay here, watching her, smelling her hair. I wasn’t ready for time to begin, for things to start happening. Give me a moment to understand. She was frowning, making little sounds. I held my breath. Don’t wake up. Please, I’m not ready…She would see me buried. What if we didn’t like each other? What if she judged me, what if she saw everything that was wrong with me—the gaping abyss of my flaws? And of course she would—what daughter didn’t? She squeezed her eyes, wrinkled her nose. Her voice, like a creaking door. Don’t cry, Iskra. Please, God, I don’t know what to do with you.
She fell back to sleep.
Thank God. I could pull her back from Death itself but didn’t know what to do with a dirty diaper. I was terrified of her, and my terror made me laugh. This redheaded riddle. Kolya never wanted children, never wanted this permanent tie. Would he be furious? But Genya would love her, protect her. He was a man for the future. He had longed for a child to carry on his shoulders, and would help her touch the stars.
She was talking again. What was going through her newborn mind, that galaxy, what tides did she recall? What dreams could she have? Did she remember the Dark Virgin by an open door, the fallen lantern? That the witches had put her in the oven? I lay curled around her, like a nebula curled around its brightest star.
Thank God to be off the Red October, away from the pinched face of Yermilova and the glowering mien of Antyushin, the actors, the politicals, the crowds, and the soldiers and the talk of atrocities. I could imagine Genya, mad with worry. For the first time I wondered, how long had I been here? Were they still waiting for me? Or were they already thundering east through the Urals, bringing the word to the benighted? Genya the Agit-Evangelist.
