by Janet Fitch
She didn’t look happy about that, but I moved to the old window seat, in the great bay window from which we’d watched the revolution unfold. One of the upper panes still had its bullet hole from the shooting—the sniper on the roof—stuffed with wadded paper. Iskra immediately started fussing. I unbuttoned my dress behind her sling and discreetly latched her onto my breast. I usually liked to watch her nursing—her druggy happiness, it made me feel like I was the Goddess of All Things—but I didn’t think Mina would enjoy seeing me nursing Kolya’s offspring.
Outside, the sky was darkening, the pale blue becoming luminous over Nevsky’s ranks, the buildings shouldering inward. This city was made for twilight. I had missed this more than I had known. Mina joined me in the little nook where we’d sat so many times—half hidden away, our legs tucked up under our skirts—and shared our dreams, outrages, ambitions. Now she kept her feet firmly on the floor, her lips tight, trying not to hear the noisy smackings of Iskra under the cloth. “What are you doing here, Marina? What do you want?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I said, “You know, I saw the photographs, from the first anniversary.” I didn’t want to say, The ones I took. Roman was listening to our every word. “I saw them on the agit-train with Genya. Moscow’s using them in agitki—did you know? They even used the ones from the Rostral Columns.” Give me credit at least for that.
“I know what you’re doing,” she whispered nastily. “It’s not going to work.”
I thought girls were supposed to grow up to resemble their mothers, but she was nothing like round, cozy Sofia Yakovlevna.
“What am I doing?” I said innocently. “We’re just sitting here having a conversation.”
She sank back into the cushions, so that she was half hidden by the alcove’s striped curtain. We’d even unconsciously taken the same sides we always did, me on the right, her on the left. “I know you,” she whispered. “You want me to tell you how good those photos were. How important. How the studio came into a bit of favor for your having shot them. Which will lead to a request to hire you again, let you live here with…” She nodded at Iskra. “You think I’m stupid? I was always smarter than you. And you don’t intimidate me anymore.”
Oh no. She hadn’t forgiven me anything.
“You’ve got that kid, you need food, a place to live,” she hissed. “Well, the answer is no. No. We barely feed ourselves these days. You’ve got two husbands, let one of them support you.”
The light illuminated the front of Mina’s ash-blond hair, washing the front of her glasses so I couldn’t see those eyes I knew so well—their gray irises flecked with white, the white-tipped lashes. My two husbands…Why not three, or ten? Useless to me now, both of them. Out the window, the city was so heartbreakingly lovely, the regular pattern of window and stone, arches and caryatids. Below us, Nevsky Prospect was like a street in a diorama in a museum—small, perfect, and empty. Without its shops, I supposed no one had a reason to stroll, even in the warmth of early autumn. And here was my best friend in the world, so close I could reach out and touch her—except that she would have slapped me if I had. This was exactly where I’d wanted to be, and the only thing standing in my way was this angry woman who knew me too well, whom I’d taught to despise me. Surely there must be a shred of forgiveness somewhere in her stony heart, the daughter of the kindest people I’d ever met.
“Don’t you turn those big brown eyes on me,” she hissed. “Where are you when anybody else needs you? Gone, gone, gone. You’ve proven yourself to be a complete moral bankrupt. I pity that kid. Grow up, Marina. I had to. You can too.”
Grovel, that was my plan. I supposed it was time to implement it. “Just a few days, Mina. Until I find some work, get my rations, a housing assignment. I have an in at Petrocommune.”
“I’m supporting three old people, plus my sisters, plus—” She gestured with her head toward Roman. So he was living here too. “You have no idea what we’ve been through. We almost lost Shusha and my aunt and uncle to typhoid last winter. Dunya got arrested for stealing firewood. Boards off a fence. You can’t take wood. It all belongs to the state now, even if it’s just a goddamned fence. The bread—you can’t imagine. And now you show up like Katya the milkmaid, with a kid, thinking you’ll just give me that smile and I’ll forget everything?” Now she cast a disparaging look at the cloth covering my suckling child. “I’m not a man. It doesn’t work on me. I’m not going to let you stay.”
“Not even for a few days?” I said, low. “For God’s sake, Mina. Two days. That’s all I ask. I have a couple days of food. Just don’t make me sleep in the hall.”
“No, no, no. I know you. Two days’ll become three and then a week and then you’re in for the duration. You’re a leech. A tick.” She said it as if it were a scientific fact, pushing her specs up on her nose. “I won’t do it.”
I expected her to be angry with me for running away with Kolya instead of working her rounds of factory demonstrations and greetings, but not for her to out-and-out slander me. “You know that’s a lie. I’ve never taken one scrap of food from your mouth, or anybody else’s. I just finished harvesting the fields to pay off the midwife. Look!” I held out one tanned hand, so she could see the calluses, the muscle and sinew of my forearm. “Leech? Of all the horrible things. Call me what you like but I’m no parasite.”
“Unlike you, I can think a week or two ahead,” she said. “And that’s what’s going to happen. For instance, how are you going to work with that kid around your neck—for Petrocommune or anyone else? It can’t even hold its head up.”
“I’ll think of something,” I said. My peasant stubbornness was digging in.
She rubbed her forehead. I was giving her a headache. She tended to have them ever since she was little, and now that she was doing so much darkroom work it must have gotten worse. Well, good. That would serve her, calling me a leech.
“Well, let me finish nursing her—can I do that? Or does that make her a leech too?”
“Fine. But then clear out. I’ve got to finish those photos. Let yourself out. You know the way.”
She got up and left me there, alone with my empty evening. I sorted through ideas of where I could go, what I could do, like hands at cards, all of them unappealing. Roman pretended to be working at his medical books, but I could tell he was enjoying the show. “You must have really done something to irk her,” he said.
I sat nursing Iskra, thinking of my options. The Krestovsky apartment. The collective flat on Furshtatskaya. The Poverty Artel. I still had friends in Petrograd—but I was shaken by how angry Mina was. I never expected people to be angry with me. If she was so mad, what would Varvara be like, let alone a darker form in the shadows…No, tomorrow I would go to Smolny. I should have gone today. I would find something, Iskra around my neck or not. Hopefully a few of those crèches had been built. If not at the Petrograd Soviet, where?
As Iskra finished her meal, I calculated how much food I really had left. Enough for one more meal, maybe two. In my aristocratic largesse, feeding the orphans of Russia, I hadn’t kept enough for myself. Not thinking ahead, as usual. Such a chess player. I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand. I would stall as long as I could…Worse came to worst, I’d sleep in the hall and let them walk over me, shame Mina into giving way. Now I wished I’d taken that bath when I could. Maybe I’d go over to the Astoria and see what Aura Cady Sands had to offer. I could present myself—“Oh, you didn’t mean tonight?” I had to handle that one carefully. I didn’t want to appear too needy, too desperate, and scare her away.
The key turned in the lock, the door opened, and Dunya Katzeva stepped in. Dunya, so beautiful! All grown up, in a neat but worn dress printed with flowers. I pushed the curtain back and she shrieked and ran to embrace me. How good to see her, to embrace her with my one free arm, her fresh girl’s smell. Dunya, the opposite of Mina—warm where her sister was cold, happy where the elder was resentful. I put a good face on it all, as if Mina had said nothing. It wasn’t
hard to put my sad mood aside. This was the homecoming I’d imagined. Dunya made a great fuss about the baby, her conversation full of sly innuendo for Roman’s sake about my hair having “grown out,” and how womanly I had become—since being Misha, yes, certainly. She was a regular Sovetskaya barynya now, a Soviet young lady, working at the Zubov Institute of Art History and spending time with Sasha Orlovsky, who was doing public projects now and teaching. “Wait till he sees you, he’ll go crazy. How’s Genya? Where’s Mina?”
“She’s in the darkroom,” I said. “She’s still mad. She says I have to clear out.”
“Well, forget that. You’re staying. Our tsarevna, she’s a very important person now,” Dunya said. “I’m surprised she didn’t make you take an appointment.”
“They had a fight,” Roman said. “Mina’s furious.”
Dunya sighed. “Mina’s always furious these days. Don’t pay any attention to her.”
I talked her into boiling some water for me and holding the baby while I had a bath. Ah! Alone in warm water, the dirt just rolled off my skin. I washed my hair, washed the train from me, the guilt, the blood, the miles, the orphans, the dust. I would have washed my dress too if I thought I’d be staying, but there was no way to know where I was sleeping tonight. I didn’t want to have to sleep in wet clothes if I was going to be in a doorway or a stairwell.
When I emerged, a new Marina, Shusha had returned from school. Her enthusiasm for my homecoming exceeded even Dunya’s. Taller, her face less babyish, her hair cropped, the skirt of her school uniform too short, she was as leggy as a young horse. She regaled me with the doings at Insurrection, where she’d been elected to her class committee, was also the chairman of the drama club and had won first prize for a poem she’d written. I made her recite it to me.
From far away the soldier heard his death.
It called to him with mouthy cannon’s speech
And punctuated now with dying breath
his comrades take his gun and breach
the enemy’s forward lines.
I especially liked that mouthy cannon, and the short last line. Shusha insisted on holding the baby, though after feeding, she always slept for a good hour or two, and was content in Dunya’s arms. Feeling herself changing hands, she just opened her eyes to slits and went back to sleep. Shusha loved the name Iskra. “I’m thinking of changing mine. Shoshanna’s so biblical.” She made a sour face.
“Shame on you. Our grandmother’s name,” Dunya chided.
“Yes, I’m the one who gets to stand naked before nasty old men. Nyet.” She sat down at the table, Iskra in her lap. “I was thinking Viktoria.”
“That’s not so revolutionary,” Dunya said.
“It’s the sound,” I explained. “K. Vik. The hard consonants, Te, and the drumroll of the errr.”
“Exactly. I’m sick of all those shhushes…” the young girl said. “Like walking in slippers, like you’re being careful not to wake anyone up. Speaking of.”
The aunt and uncle, Fanya and Aaron, emerged from the back hall. They must have been napping in their room. Aaron’s hair was a white cloud. Their smiles were warm, but they’d both lost teeth in the last year, and their hands trembled as they clasped mine and kissed me three times. They smelled musty as old pillows. Lucky to be alive after typhoid. A hard winter for the old people. I could understand Mina’s fears. But I wouldn’t be a drag on their household. I could work, I could add to their income, I could get rations, Drops of Milk. I could steal wood. They could use another able-bodied person around here.
We sat around the table, talking, laughing, Shusha holding Iskra. How I envied Mina in this. She still had a family. Educated people, soulful—a living, breathing organism. My family had not survived the stresses of the revolution. How was it that theirs had? The samovar boiled and Dunya made tea. She poured it out, a pale green. “Chinese?”
“Celery.”
Shusha added, “Exclusive to the Yellow Emperor.”
It was dark when Sofia Yakovlevna returned from the queues, a little frail, her sack heavy with provisions. She was thinner and more lined than last year, more bowed, but how happy she was to see me! She hurried to put her sack on the table and embrace me. She still smelled of chicken, though I couldn’t imagine they’d had a chicken in years. Such a warm welcome, and the shock when she saw Iskra in Shusha’s arms. “Yours? It can’t be! Oh, this precious child! Let me hold her. I must.” She immediately took her. “Sweet adorable thing!” As if Iskra were her own granddaughter. Asking her name, her age. “Iskra? Iskra? Like a box of matches? Akh, this revolution, it doesn’t know when to stop!” The baby just kept sleeping. “We’re so glad to have you back in Petrograd, dear. Both of you,” she addressed the baby. “Like old times. I wish Papa were here. Where are you staying?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I just got back today.”
“Is your mother still here? Up next to the Romanian ambassador?”
It was funny, that’s how she recalled our place on Furshtatskaya Street. Though Mina was invited hundreds of times to our house, our parents met only at school functions. “No. My mother’s gone—followed a mystic. Probably heading for Bukhara by now.” The rook, the labyrinth, the treasure.
“And your father?”
I sighed. “Off with Kolchak’s lot, I think.”
“Then you’ll stay here. I insist on it,” Mina’s mother said firmly. “Have some more tea, dear. I’ll get dinner on.” She put Iskra back into Shusha’s arms—“Watch her head, Shushochka”—and picked up the sack from the table.
In time, Mina reappeared through the black cloth curtains from the studio, saw me chatting with her sisters, my damp hair. “Are you still here? I thought I made myself clear.”
“I was just going when Dunya got home,” I said, “and I was chatting with everyone. Your mother invited me to stay.” I tried not to smirk.
“I don’t care what my mother says. Get out and take your brat with you!”
“What’s gotten into you?” said Aunt Fanya. “This is your best friend.”
“No,” she said. “That’s done.”
Sofia Yakovlevna appeared from the kitchen, drying her hands. “We’ll have dinner in ten minutes. Such as it is. Set the table, Shusha.”
Mina was boiling. “Mother, I made it very clear to Marina that we have no room for her here.”
You could hear the chairs squeak. Her mother stood in the doorway, towel in her hands, the same frizzy hair as Mina’s, only tucked back in a large chignon. “Why would you say such a thing? What’s wrong with you? She’s been gone for a year—”
“Let her own family take care of her,” Mina said.
The piercing unfairness of that.
“Why would you say such a thing, Minochka?” her mother said softly.
“Because I don’t want her here.” She was trembling with rage.
“What happened between you girls?” Her mother looked from her daughter to me and back. “You were always such good friends.” She tried to touch her daughter’s cheek but Mina swatted her away. Her face was gray-white with perceived injustice, yet she was unable to tell her mother what the trouble was. I’m in love with Kolya Shurov, and this is his baby. I can’t stand to look at her. Marina ran out on me, she took my man, took everything. She gets everything she wants, but she’s not getting this. No, she would be ashamed to admit it was jealousy. And though she was throwing me to the dogs, I could not bring myself to tear the skin off her shame.
“Let’s vote.” Shusha stood next to me. “How many people want Marina to stay? Show of hands.”
My heart in my throat. The hands went up. In my favor, Dunya, Shusha, Aunt Fanya, and Uncle Aaron. It was a majority, by anyone’s count.
“Stop it, Shusha.” Sofia Yakovlevna clapped her hand over her mouth, and turned away. “My God, what is happening to us?”
Roman stood up, as he would stand to give a speech in a student meeting. “I vote no. Think, Katzevs. You really want a baby in th
e apartment, crying at all hours? Stinking diapers on the stove? Some of us have to work. It’s just impractical. Less to eat, no sleep,” Roman said. “I say, Mina’s working her heart out, she should have the final say.”
Mina smiled at him gratefully.
“We all do our part, Roman Osipovich,” Sofia Yakovlevna said, stiff as a British dragoon, but I could hear the tears in her voice. “Each in his own way. That’s what a family is. When you have babies, you’ll see.”
“We won’t be having any,” said Roman. “Neither of us wants ’em.”
The older woman shook her head as if to clear water from her ears—a bit of news she had not heard, that they’d decided not to have children. Too many blows at once. She lowered herself into a chair and buried her head in her hands.
“All this is beside the point,” Mina said. “Who keeps a roof over all your heads? Me. Who left university to keep this family together? Me. And I’m saying I won’t have her living here. End of discussion!”
Dunya wiped up the spilled tea with her napkin. “Mina, you’re being a perfect beast. It’s like you’re not even a person anymore, you’re some kind of golem.”
“Mama sides with us, don’t you, Mama?” Shusha said, smoothing her mother’s hair. “Please don’t cry, Mama. She’s just being a donkey.”
I wanted to sink under the floor. The last decent family in Petrograd, and I had them at each other’s throats. “Listen, I’ll go. This is no good. Look. I’m leaving.” I took the baby from Shusha, snugged her into the sling.
But Mina wasn’t hearing anything except the blood pounding in her head. “Listen, big shots, you all want to take my place?” She leaned over the table to her sisters, white around the mouth with rage. “You think this is so easy, Shushochka? Fine, why don’t you quit school and you stay here all day? You take the photographs. You keep the studio running. You get in with Narkompros. You keep the film coming, and the chemicals, and coat the papers and develop the negatives and do the printing.” She was weeping. “And I’ll go to school and be in the drama club and write poetry about our brave Red soldiers.”
