by Janet Fitch
Every night, we made love, bathed, and set out for the evening, to some restaurant or nightclub—a new city was springing to life, full of people I’d never seen before, thuggish men and their girls. How could they have sprung up so quickly? Five months since we’d had the NEP, and the gangsters were already triumphant. I couldn’t get used to it. I couldn’t get used to any of it. The phone rang at odd hours. I hadn’t lived in a flat with a working telephone since before the war. Kolya and I had a special signal—ring twice, ring off, ring again. Otherwise I let it go. Kolya told me to ignore it. “If you start taking messages, I’ll have to return them, track people down, blah blah blah. I have better things to do with my day. Best to keep my sense of mystery. I’ll call them when I want them.”
A flood of presents crossed the threshold. He was always a generous man. Blue satin shoes, a pair of emerald earrings. “For the lovely Esmerelda.” A dance dress sewn with silvery beads shimmered and hissed when you shook it. It looked just like water. That color…reminded me that Blok was dead, that silver and lilac world. I was happier with the simple cotton dresses Kolya reluctantly produced, one in green with red chevrons, the other, navy with a white collar. A pair of leather pumps, scarves. But he loved buying me underwear, and silk stockings. I had been wearing my underwear for so long, sewing up the holes, that my body couldn’t imagine such luxury. He teased me when I protested about silk underwear. “When did you become practical?”
What a question. So many things we still didn’t know about each other. I had no faith in his unreal world, no expectation it would continue. What would I do with a silver dress when the trapdoor gaped and all this disappeared? Yet…a beauty shop opened in a courtyard off Manezhny Lane, and I finally succumbed. Unreal to see myself in the mirror, my hair newly cut, knowing that people still didn’t have tea, or shoes, that the Povolzhye was shriveling. I felt ashamed of having the money to have my hair styled. It cost ten thousand rubles—the denominations exploding. How long would a worker at Skorokhod have to labor to see that kind of cash? The Kerensky bills didn’t even seem real, nobody had accepted them in years.
I wandered the streets full of uncertain people, ragged and vulnerable. Slightly out of plumb. They didn’t walk so much as dart, glancing quickly out from under their eyebrows, startling easily, picking their way like invalids who didn’t trust their footing. In the cool of a courtyard, children played under a grandmother’s watchful gaze. A woman hung her laundry, a man sat on a box before a cage of rabbits, letting them take the air. He must have been raising them in his apartment. From the windows above, a woman was scolding someone. An old babushka rested her sagging bust on a windowsill. Her gaze met mine. You will be me tomorrow. In the blink of an eye, all this will be over. The Catherine Canal flowed green past the Church of the Spilled Blood with its twisted cupolas. I stood at the rail, gazing down toward Nevsky and the Kazan Cathedral with its pillared crescent. So much water had flowed under the bridge since terrorists spilled the blood of Alexander II, ushering in the iron rule of Alexander III. So much water, so much blood. All these islands connected by their pretty bridges and ugly past. The autocracy it supported, vanished forever, the moment of freedom, when the revolution could have saved itself, gone as well, in blood. I studied my city with the nostalgia of an exile, as if these impressions would have to last me a lifetime.
Now I could see the great bow of the House, our ship, the country in which talent was the only passport. Already an outcast. Exiled. Just a woman, like any other woman, stockings and skirt, a hank of hair, lips fattened by kisses. Where once I had been a member of a God-given fraternity. I had been one of them. Not somebody’s girl, not a hopeful hanger-on hiding behind the coats. I’d been invited there by Blok himself. He still lived on, not in Petrograd, where they buried the sun, but in Petersburg, where he lived and always would—in certain sounds, in the color of sky, in the gathering mist. And what of me?
As I pondered, three figures were headed my way. I would know them in the dark: Anton, tall and angular, scowling; Tereshenko, with his boxer’s shamble, hunched, aggressive; and Slezin, slight, quick, small shouldered, hands in pockets, listening. The three of them hogged the sidewalk, pale, intent, oblivious, discussing some urgent matter. A woman with a handcart ran into them on purpose to teach them a lesson. I wanted to join them. Kolya didn’t understand the communal life of art, the intense involvement in the making of it, the sense of its absolute value. This was where I belonged, not having my hair cut and eating éclairs in the flat on Preobrazhenskaya Square.
Yet it was over for me. I had been associated with Gumilev and the Kronstadt sailors, someone had said something to someone, and it was done. If Anton was ever brought in for questioning, he had to be innocent of my whereabouts. They came closer, and I stepped back into the shadow of a passageway in my chic shoes and green dress, my bright new hair, and let them pass by, close enough to touch. How thin Anton was, how shabby and badly shaved in the bright summer light. I was already growing used to Kolya’s fleshiness, his vigor. My friend was pale, but utterly engaged. Talking to the others about some urgent literary matter—the future of futurism, their inclusion or exclusion from some reading or other. The role of Kolya’s mistress fit me a bit like the party frock my Golovin grandmother’s dressmaker had once constructed for me—sea green with a satin sash, it made me look like an angel, but frankly it itched where the netting was sewn to the waist and left an angry red line on my skin. I loved Kolya, but I was also a poet, and this was my flock, my tribe. Couldn’t I have both? Couldn’t I have everything? But life was not kind to me, and the sword of arrest hung heavier. I leaned against the grimy stones, my new shoes in dirty water, and waited for the bitterness to subside. I had Kolya again. And no one was keeping me from my verse.
Outside a café on Mokhovaya Street, a whistle greeted me. The orphan Makar, out selling his newspapers. “Hey, Comrade Marina! What’s up—rich boyfriend?”
“Something like it.” I smiled, pushing back my curls. “How’s business?”
He shrugged, hoisting his merchandise higher on his hip. “Getting out of the newspaper racket. Pravda stinks.” He tugged on my sleeve, lowering his voice. “I got a new line. Galoshy is what sells.” Rubbers. “I know this guy who brings the good stuff in from Finland. Packs ’em in fish. Ha ha ha ha. Fish! Anybody looks, it’s just fish. Smells right too. Pre-stunk.”
I gave him a ruble and got my Pravda. “I’m sure you’ll clean up.”
“Everybody’s looking to have some fun. You want anything, I’m at the Little Brick after midnight.” A dance hall for workingmen. “That’s where the money is. Your fellow gets an armful, some nice Katya, and remembers, Ai! I got no preservativ for Comrade Eel!” The boy was growing a slight fuzzy moustache. He must be eating better, or perhaps puberty happened to everyone, even orphans. “For you, five hundred rubles.”
Well, that certainly would pay better than Pravda.
I returned to the flat, took off my new shoes and cleaned them, hung up my dress, and made some tea, and in my new slip with a lace edge sat down with a biscuit and opened the paper.
A counterrevolutionary monarchist group, the Petrograd Fighting Organization, had been infiltrated and captured. Eight hundred people arrested. Eight hundred monarchists! I couldn’t imagine. Led by Professor Vladimir Nikolaevich Tagantsev. A jolt of terror shot through me. My gymnasium—the Tagantsev Academy—was founded by Nadezhda Nikolaevna Tagantseva. The same family, it had to be. It said this Fighting Organization had been waiting for the Kronstadt uprising to seize power. I tore through the paper to find the list. There had to be a list—the list of the executed. There it was. Sixty-one names. Sixty-one executions. My eyes flew down the page and stopped at number 30.
GUMILEV, Nikolai Stepanovich. Former nobleman, philologist, member of the editorial board of Universal Literature, nonparty former officer…
EXECUTED.
I held my hand over my mouth. Actively helped create counterrevolutionary content…recei
ved money…He’d thought that they had a gentleman’s agreement. That he would serve them faithfully, and in return they’d let him keep his conscience. Wrong. Wrong wrong. That they would let him walk around like that, free in his own mind. With an intact spine. EXECUTED.
Prince Sergei Ukhtemsky, sculptor, publisher of Rech’. EXECUTED
Professor Vladimir Tagantsev, Petrograd University, former landowner. Nadezhda Tagantseva, former headmistress, Tagantsev Academy, his wife. EXECUTED.
A Kerensky minister, Lazarevsky. Gizetti, literary critic, and his wife. Naval officers, geologists, chemists, physicists—EXECUTED. EXECUTED. EXECUTED. I didn’t know what to do with the paper. I threw it down, I picked it up, I marched about the apartment. None of them had done anything but think for themselves. The Bolsheviks were killing symbols now, like slaughtering real swans because they were a metaphor for the Whites. They knew what they were doing—attacking the symbol because the thing itself was gone. Creating enemies out of nothing, so they could justify their crimes. Like that hungry old woman trying to eat the painting of sausages off the shutters of a shop. It didn’t matter that the Bolsheviks had crushed the last real opposition—the revolutionary sailors. Now they would impress upon us, the intellectuals and disgruntled workers, that despite the return of capitalism, and the famine, the Bolsheviks were still firmly in the driver’s seat, reins looped double about one hand, the knout in the other.
Out the window, the bells of the Preobrazhensky Church began chiming vespers, then farther off, St. Panteleimon, and the Church of the Spilled Blood. Kazan Cathedral, and St. Isaac’s replied. I found the bottle of vodka—prerevolutionary—and poured out a glass and saluted them all. Nikolai Stepanovich. Vechnaya pamyat’. I was sure he’d died with valor. He’d lived his freedom openly, and they’d killed him for it. I’d admired him, his quixotic position, but was this really what Gorky had in mind for me when he’d said to go home and live as if I were free?
I refilled my glass and toasted Nadezhda and Vladimir, then Blok, and Pasha. I reread that sickening list and kept stopping at Gumilev. Something was off about it, the way they described him. Former nobleman, philologist…board of Universal Literature…So many things could have been said about the man: Poet. Belle-lettrist. His foreign connections, positions on the boards of the House of Arts, the Poets’ Guild, the House of Writers. He’d been born at Kronstadt, for God’s sake. But none of that was mentioned. Only Universal Literature. I’d thought at first: that’s what happened when your enemy wrote your obituary. But one had to read Pravda like a poem. What wasn’t said was always as important as what was. That Universal Literature was a shiver in the air.
Gorky’s crown jewel, his most treasured idea. In saying Universal Literature, they meant Gorky.
Now I was seeing a second picture. Gorky hadn’t especially liked Gumilev, but would never have allowed them to shoot a poet, any poet, without a tremendous fight, and for Gumilev he would have gone all out. For whatever reason, Gorky had not been able to prevent Gumilev’s execution.
I saw it.
A case was being assembled against Gorky and all he represented, everyone he protected.
The sound of chimes, dying in the twilight.
I prayed he’d left by now. Yet without Gorky, we were all on the run. What chance did we have if the Bolsheviks terminated the House of Arts and Universal Literature? No protection, no work…We’d be blown to the four directions, to disappear like the last grains in the drought-stricken Volga.
I peered out the curtain into the darkening square. Below, the man in the straw hat smoked in the shadow of a tree. Why did they have to keep watching the flat if Kolya already had a driver who knew his every move? Why wasn’t that enough? How I hated this cat-and-mouse game. I couldn’t stand to be locked up again. And to think that Papa had stood a year of solitary confinement. That cell, the weight of the walls, the moisture, the dark, I would go mad. It terrified me to consider whom I might implicate under duress. I thought of the list of the executed. Varvara had told me she wouldn’t be there to save me.
I thought of Genya waving his red banner like a windup toy. He had thought I was the naive one, explaining that the death of the sailors was inevitable. What did he think of his masters now?
Oh, what were they doing at the House of Arts? I should be there. Were there protests? A defiant evening of Gumilev’s poetry? Or would they be hunkered down, speaking in whispers, waiting for the next blow. I had to see Anton. Neither of us had liked Gumilev and yet from now on to say Gumilev would mean literature, culture, a Russia we’d hoped we could live in. I thought of Anton’s agitation today on the street. This must have been what they were talking about.
But how could I contact him? They would certainly be watching the House of Arts today. They might have informers. One of Gumilev’s students, perhaps, a wide-eyed hanger-on. No, I couldn’t go there, trailing the contagion of my own political cloud, like typhoid. And what about Gorky? With Moura gone, oh Lord.
I heard the automobile outside, the slamming of the car door. Thank God, he was home. But he lingered downstairs, chatting up the driver. He couldn’t turn it off for a second, could he? He had to charm any and everyone. Finally, I heard him clambering up the stairs, ran to meet him, pink cheeked and smiling, clutching a bunch of big-headed roses and a bottle of champagne. His flushed, grinning face. “They’ve offered Sir Graham a copper mine. Near Chelyabinsk. A sure thing. Get dressed, we’re celebrating.”
“They shot Gumilev,” I said.
“Who?” He set his gifts in the kitchen, handed me the roses.
In the future we’d say roses when we meant slaughter, when we meant blood.
“The poet Gumilev. I told you, they arrested him. Right out of the House of Arts. And they searched my room, remember? They shot him.”
“Poor devil.” He set two pink coupes on the counter and was already removing the metal net from the cork, unwinding the foil sleeve. He popped the cork, and the champagne spilled out. “Hand me that glass, quick!” I handed him one, and the bubbling liquid poured in. He handed it to me, licked the spillage off his hand, took the bottle and the other glass out to the table by the windows. I stared at that paper of roses, and left them where they were.
I stood over Kolya where he’d sat down at the table and kicked off his shoes.
“They shot him, Kolya. Sixty-one people!” I picked up the paper and thrust it at him. “I could have been on that list.”
“But you weren’t. Here’s to good timing, and Englishmen.”
I simply stood there. Was it Gumilev I was weeping for, or myself? “They’re watching the house. Your driver’s Cheka. This isn’t a joke.”
“Drink.” He lifted my glass to my lips. I drank, watching him over the rim. “They’re not going to arrest you. What matters to them right now is the restoration of the rail line and copper for Lenin’s electrification of Russia.” He took off his straw hat and his beautiful pale jacket, smoothed out his chestnut hair. “Listen. You and me, we’re not Gumilevs. This is a different game altogether.” He toasted himself and drained his glass, caught the hem of my slip and tried to pull me over to him, but I brushed his hand away.
“You’re wrong. They can play two games at the same time. Three.” I wondered what the man in the street could see of this. I turned off the lamp. “If Sir Graham wanted mining concessions, why would he care about me, some girl poet he never met? He might even be willing to sacrifice Kolya Shurov, and chalk it up to the cost of doing business.”
My love smiled that smile that said he had a secret, that he knew things. “Trust me,” he said. “Sir Graham’s interest in this deal includes Kolya Shurov.”
“What do you have on him?” I said. “Murder?”
He grabbed my wrist and pulled me onto his lap. “That’s top secret and classified.”
I drank the rest of my glass, let him pour me another. I hooked my arm around his neck, drew him close. His smell made me want to kiss him, to forget all this, but I could n
ot. Was I drunk? Not drunk enough. “Listen to me, Kolya. I want a visa. A passport. Passage to England. Before you sign the deal.” My own words surprised me. But now that I’d said them, I saw that was exactly what I wanted. To fly, to go somewhere I could take a breath. Where I could live without looking over my shoulder, where I could use my real name.
“Why before? This deal’s a triumph,” he said, pouring another glass. “I’m sorry they shot your friend. But this is the future.”
I tipped up his chin so he could see how serious I was. “Once it’s signed, we’re all expendable. Especially me.”
He grinned. “Believe me, the only one who cares about you is me. Of course they’re watching the flat. I’m acting for an English industrialist. Of course they want to know where I go, who I meet. But they’re not going to do anything about it.”
“I need to leave, Kolya,” I said, my voice rising, an edge of hysteria. “I don’t want to be what they have on you.”
“There’s plenty of time,” he murmured, his hand on my neck, sliding down inside my slip.
“Stop it.” I grabbed his hand and bit it. “Listen to me. Get me my papers, or I’ll find a way, I swear.” I didn’t realize until now that I could not stay here anymore. I couldn’t be a Gumilev, living so nobly among the ruins, proudly, bravely, steadily, while the Cheka pounded on my door. Or an Akhmatova, that tower. I wanted more than to witness the end of all this, and then to be killed myself. “You’ve spent too much time among the English. You’ve forgotten what it’s like. You haven’t seen what we’ve become.” I heard the panic in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. “I’ve been in that cell, Kolya, and you haven’t.”
His upturned blue eyes, finally serious. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll get things going, all right? I can’t guarantee it’ll happen by the time we sign—we’re pushing for a quick resolution. But I’ll contact the trade office in London, get things started from that end. ‘My assistant requires a visa.’” He nodded at me, as you nod to a child, so that he’ll nod in return. “I swear. You’ll get your papers, and then if you decide you don’t need them, you can put them in a drawer.”
